CHARLESTON, W.Va. — No knot-tying demonstrations. No wood-carving advice. President Donald Trump went straight to starting a fire in a speech at a national Boy Scout gathering.

Parents, former scouts and others were furious after Trump railed against his enemies, promoted his political agenda and underlined his insistence on loyalty before an audience of tens of thousands of school-age scouts in West Virginia on Monday night.

“Is nothing safe?” Jon Wolfsthal, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter, saying Trump turned the event into a “Nazi Youth rally.”

Trump, the eighth president to address the National Scout Jamboree, was cheered by the crowd, but his comments put an organization that has tried in recent years to avoid political conflict and become more inclusive in an awkward position.

The knot-tying was left to Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who said on Twitter that his stomach was in knots over the president’s over-the-top delivery.

The Boy Scouts’ official Facebook page was barraged with comments condemning the speech. Several people posted links to the scouts’ policy on participation in political events — which sharply limits what scouts should do. Boy Scouts are typically 10 to 18 years old.

The pushback from Americans over the speech included members from both parties.

“I just don’t think it was appropriate,” said Rob Romalewski, a Republican and retired information-technology expert from suburban New Orleans who attained the rank of Eagle Scout as a teenager and has worked with the Boy Scouts all his adult life.

“It just doesn’t seem like he was talking to the boys,” Romalewski said. “He was more or less just using it as an excuse to babble on.”