"Nothing is easier or more pathetic than being a critic, because they are the people that can't get the job done", Trump said. "Following your convictions means you must be willing to face criticism from those who lack the same courage to do what is right".
The president also offered a robust defense of public faith in American life, saying graduates shouldn't let other people tell them what do believe, "especially when you know that you're right". "In America, we don't worship government, we worship God", Trump said, eliciting the biggest applause of the speech in which he emphasized the importance of not giving up.
The speech - which received a standing ovation - was delivered just beyond the end zone in school's football stadium before what Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr. said was a crowd of 50,000.
"The more that a broken system tells you that you're wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead", Trump said.
At Liberty, Trump peppered his remarks with the kind of anti-establishment rhetoric that fueled his maverick presidential campaign, telling graduates to challenge "entrenched interests".
TRUMP: I've seen so many people - they're forced through lots of reasons, sometimes including family, to go down a path that they don't want to go down, to go down a path that leads them to something that they don't love, that they don't enjoy. He admitted that FBI Director James Comey's firing was motivated in part by the agency's probe of Russian Federation connections to Trump's own inner circle. Trump asked the newly-graduated students. "We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell's endorsement and are exhausted of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history", the letter reads.
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Finals are always fun, and the Europa League is a big, handsome competition". "If everything goes normal and we have no problems, Sergio plays the final".
But they had a mixed response to an executive order on religious liberty that Trump signed last week.
It was the third time Trump has appeared at Liberty, founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, who was best known for his anti-gay bigotry and for launching the so-called "Moral Majority" movement. Trump, the divorced New Yorker who somehow became a champion for Evangelical Christians a year ago, told students at the university founded by the late Rev. "Because it's the outsiders who change the world and who make a real and lasting difference".
The White House dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to the Notre Dame commencement Saturday.
Trump previously spoke at Liberty University while on the campaign trail in January 2016, a speech where the then-Republican frontrunner referred to the New Testament book "Two Corinthians", even though it's commonly referred to as "Second Corinthians". Trump said, drawing laughs from the crowd as he turned toward Falwell.
Earlier, during the Air Force One ride to southwestern Virginia, Trump told reporters that "we can make a fast decision" on a new Federal Bureau of Investigation director, possibly before his departure Friday on a trip to the Middle East and Europe.
"They used to be about academic freedom and free exchange of ideas", Falwell told Fox News. "Embrace the label", the NY real estate mogul-turned-politician told graduates. George H.W. Bush was the first.
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