{"id":465146,"date":"2026-06-07T08:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T08:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/465146\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T08:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T08:50:09","slug":"hegseth-invokes-immigration-and-invasion-in-d-day-speech-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/465146\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth invokes immigration and ‘invasion’ in D-Day speech in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth used a D-Day anniversary speech to appear to link immigration by sea to the wartime liberation of Europe, warning that the freedom won by Allied troops could prove temporary if leaders failed to defend it.<\/p>\n

Hegseth, speaking at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in northwestern France on Saturday (local time) during commemorations for the 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944, landings, said that today, “different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies”.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?\u201d he added. \u201cI pray not, and I believe not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth did not use the word immigration, but his remarks echoed broader Trump administration criticism of Europe over migration, borders and what US officials have described as censorship of nationalist and far-right voices.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s office condemned US Vice President JD Vance<\/a> for blaming immigration for the killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old British student stabbed to death in Southampton, even though both Nowak and his killer were British.<\/p>\n

In December, the Trump administration\u2019s national security strategy warned that Europe faced the \u201cprospect of civilisation erasure\u201d and could become \u201cunrecognisable\u201d within 20 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth used a D-Day anniversary speech to appear to link immigration by sea to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,917,43,64,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":["post-465146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-immigration","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}