Has Any Member of Donald Trumps Family Ever Serve:in He Us Mi
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 .
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery most Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that "the helicopter couldn't wing" and that the Hugger-mugger Service wouldn't drive him there. Neither merits 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 24-hour interval. In a conversation with senior staff members on the forenoon of the scheduled visit, Trump said, "Why should I go to that cemetery? Information technology's filled with losers." In a split up conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential boxing in American history, and the footing on which it was fought is venerated past the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris at that place in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, "Who were the good guys in this war?" He also said that he didn't understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.
Trump'south understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and cede has interested me since he expressed antipathy for the state of war tape of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more five years as a prisoner of the Due north Vietnamese. "He's not a state of war hero," Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. "I like people who weren't captured."
There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, simply the performatively patriotic Trump did no harm to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this mode. Nor did he prepare his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Regular army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him later on he won the nomination. When McCain died, in Baronial 2018, Trump told his senior staff, co-ordinate to iii sources with direct noesis of this event, "Nosotros're not going to support that loser's funeral," and he became furious, co-ordinate to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. "What the fuck are nosotros 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 status of anonymity. The White House did non render earlier calls for comment, just Alyssa Farah, a White Business firm spokesperson, emailed me this statement shortly after this story was posted: "This report is imitation. President Trump holds the military machine in the highest regard. He'southward demonstrated his commitment to them at every turn: delivering on his promise to give our troops a much needed pay enhance, increasing military spending, signing critical veterans reforms, and supporting military spouses. This has no footing in fact.")
Trump's understanding of heroism has non evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president's views, he seems to genuinely non sympathise why Americans treat sometime prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he sympathise why pilots who are shot downwards in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since condign president, according to three sources with straight knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. West. Bush as a "loser" for being shot downwardly past the Japanese equally a Navy pilot in Earth War Ii. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the aforementioned mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)
When lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. Only his pessimism about service and heroism extends fifty-fifty to the World State of war I dead cached outside Paris—people who were killed more than than a quarter century before he was born. Trump finds the notion of armed services service difficult to understand, and the thought of volunteering to serve particularly incomprehensible. (The president did not serve in the armed services; he received a medical deferment from the typhoon during the Vietnam War because of the declared presence of os spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avert contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his "personal Vietnam.")
On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White Business firm. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretarial assistant of homeland security, and who would, a short fourth dimension later on, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were ready to visit Section threescore, the fourteen-acre area of the cemetery that is the burying footing for those killed in America's most recent wars. Kelly's son Robert is buried in Section lx. A commencement lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to bring together John Kelly in paying respects at his son's grave, and to condolement the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with noesis of this visit, Trump, while standing past Robert Kelly'south grave, turned directly to his male parent and said, "I don't get information technology. What was in information technology for them?" Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America's all-volunteer strength. But later on he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand not-transactional life choices.
"He can't fathom the thought of doing something for someone other than himself," i of Kelly's friends, a retired 4-star general, told me. "He just thinks that anyone who does anything when at that place'south no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There's no money in serving the nation." Kelly's friend went on to say, "Trump tin't imagine anyone else's hurting. That's why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial 24-hour interval in the cemetery where he's buried."
I've asked numerous general officers over the by year for their assay of Trump's seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations. Some of his pessimism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump's understanding of the rules governing the employ of the armed forces. This consequence came to a caput in early on June, during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of Blackness people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of defense, lambasted Trump at the fourth dimension for ordering law-enforcement officers to forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Foursquare, and for using soldiers as props: "When I joined the military, some l years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution," Mattis wrote. "Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would exist ordered nether any circumstance to violate the Ramble rights of their boyfriend citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with armed services leadership standing alongside."
Some other explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump's material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don't pursue riches are "losers." (According to eyewitnesses, afterwards a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Full general Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, "That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?")
Still another, related, caption concerns what appears to be Trump's pathological fear of appearing to look like a "sucker" himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, likewise as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. "He has a lot of fear," one officer with firsthand noesis of Trump's views said. "He doesn't see the heroism in fighting." Several observers told me that Trump is securely anxious most dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who take suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has received the bodies of slain service members "many, many" times, but in fact he has traveled to Dover Air Forcefulness Base of operations, the transfer point for the remains of fallen service members, but four times since becoming president. In some other incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called "virtually all" of the families of service members who had died during his term, then began rush-aircraft condolence letters when families said the president was not telling the truth.
Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging armed forces parades, but just of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an outcome, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. "Nobody wants to see that," he said.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/
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