Trump: Americans Who Died in War
Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’
The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.
BY JEFFREY GOLDBERG — When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides.
Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House did not return earlier calls for comment. Only Denials
ELIOT A. COHEN: AMERICA’S GENERALS MUST STAND UP TO T-RUMP — Trump’s understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)
ANNE APPLEBAUM — When lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born. Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible.
T-RUMP — HE IS A FRICKING DRAFT DODGER
(The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the fake ( admitted it was a lie) alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet and a doctor who traded plumbing with T-RUMPS Dad - Read the truth and the whole story right here. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his “ personal Vietnam.”)
📶 ON THE LADDER OF AMERICAN PATRIOTS WHO HAVE SERVED THEIR COUNTRY THERE IS NO STATUS LOWER THAN A DRAFT DODGING COWARD OR CELEBRITY WHO NEVER SERVED, MAKES CLAIMS AND DISREGARDS THOSE WHO HAVE PASSED BEFORE HIM WITH DISRESPECT— THATS T-RUMP!
IT DEPENDS ON WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO AS TO HOW THEY FEEL —
➡️ PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT RESENT DRAFT DODGERS BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY SHOULD HAVE STOOD UP AND DONE THEIR DUTY TO FIGHT IN THE WARS TO DEFEAT COMMUNISM.
⬅️ WHEN PEOPLE ON THE LEFT RESENT DRAFT DODGERS, IT ISN'T DRAFT DODGERS IN GENERAL, ITS THE HYPOCRISY OF PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT CHOOSING THOSE SAME DRAFT DODGERS THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO RESENT TO LEAD THEM --
🔁 ONE DOES'NT LIKE PEOPLE WHO DODGED THE DRAFT ON PRINCIPLE, BUT SEEM TO BE OK WITH THE ONES WHO DODGED IT BECAUSE THEIR FAMILIES HAD THE MEANS TO GET AWAY WITH IT — ( LIKE T-RUMP)