'He is a coward': Trump condemned for reportedly
calling US war dead ‘suckers’
Trump claims accusations, confirmed by two former DHS
officials, are ‘totally false’ as Biden criticizes president
Trump says
he will not cut funding to Stars and Stripes paper
Tom
McCarthy in New York and Lauren Gambino and David Smith in Washington
Sat 5 Sep
2020 00.17 BSTFirst published on Fri 4 Sep 2020 18.30 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/04/trump-soldiers-tammy-duckworth-joe-biden
Current and
former members of the military, elected officials and Democratic presidential
nominee Joe Biden reacted with outrage and sadness on Friday, as ex-Trump
administration officials confirmed key details of a bombshell report in which
the US president referred to fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”.
The
Atlantic magazine published a story on Thursday in which four sources close to
Donald Trump said he cancelled a visit to pay respects at an American military
cemetery outside Paris in 2018 because he thought the dead soldiers were
“losers” and “suckers” and did not want the rain to mess up his hair.
Elizabeth
Neumann, a former assistant secretary of counter-terrorism in the Department of
Homeland Security, and Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff in that
department, said the account was true, asserting that Trump’s low opinion of
soldiers killed and wounded in combat was well known inside the administration.
The White
House moved to deny the report unusually quickly and forcefully. Trump himself
dismissed it as a politically motivated “hoax” and claimed 11 current and
former officials supported his account.
“There is
nobody feels more strongly about our soldiers, our wounded warriors, our soldiers
that died in war than I do,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday.
“It’s a hoax. Just like the fake dossier was a hoax, just like the Russia,
Russia, Russia was a hoax. It was a total hoax: no collusion. Just like so many
other things, it’s a hoax. And you’ll hear more of these things, totally
unrelated, as we get closer and closer to election.”
Asked why
John Kelly, a retired marine corps general and Trump’s former chief of staff,
was not among those defending him, the president added: “He was with me, didn’t
do a good job, had no temperament and ultimately he was petered out, he was
exhausted. This man was totally exhausted. He wasn’t even able to function in
the last number of months. He was not able to function.”
The
Atlantic’s source, he speculated, “could have been a guy like a John Kelly”.
Trump
tweeted that he would not defund the Stars and Stripes newspaper, which serves
US servicemen and women worldwide, after a Pentagon memo ordering its closure
was reported by USA Today, causing huge controversy.
When my son
volunteered and joined the United States military and went to Iraq for a year …
he was not a sucker
Joe Biden
The US
secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, also defended Trump, but the denials were met
with widespread skepticism because of his past remarks about military veterans.
And in an
unusual intervention, the first lady, Melania Trump, also weighed in, tweeting
that the Atlantic story “was not true”.
“It has
become a very dangerous time when anonymous sources are believed above all
else, & no one knows their motivation,” she wrote.
A visibly
angry Biden called the alleged comments “disgusting” and said Trump was “not
fit to be commander-in-chief”.
“When my
son volunteered and joined the United States military – and went to Iraq for a
year, won the Bronze Star and other commendations, he was not a sucker,” Biden
said, his voice rising, in remarks in Wilmington, Delaware.
His son
Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, deployed to Iraq in 2008.
“If these
statements are true, the president should humbly apologize to every Gold Star
mother and father and every Blue Star family,” Biden said. “Who the heck does
he think he is?
“I’m always
cautioned not to lose my temper,” Biden said. “This may be as close as I come
in this campaign. It’s just a marker of how deeply the president and I disagree
on the role of the president of the United States of America.”
On a press
call hosted by Biden’s campaign, the Democratic Illinois senator Tammy
Duckworth, who lost both her legs in combat in Iraq, accused Trump of
attempting to “politicize and pervert our military to stroke his own ego”.
“This is a
man who spends every day redefining the concept of narcissism; a man who’s led
a life of privilege, with everything handed to him on a silver platter,” she
said.
“Of course,
he thinks about war selfishly. He thinks of it as a transactional cost, instead
of in human lives and American blood spilled, because that’s how he’s viewed
his whole life. He doesn’t understand other people’s bravery and courage,
because he’s never had any of his own.
“I take my
wheelchair, and my titanium legs over Donald Trump’s supposed bone spurs any
day,” she added, referring to one reason Trump received draft deferments during
the Vietnam war.
The call
also included the congressman Conor Lamb, a marine veteran, and Khizr Khan, a
Gold Star father whose son was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004 and
who was himself famously attacked by Trump during the 2016 campaign.
Khan said
Trump was “incapable – let me repeat it again – he is incapable of
understanding service, valor and courage”.
“His soul
cannot conceive of integrity and honor. His soul is that of a coward.”
In an
interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Mike Pompeo defended
the president’s support of the military.
“I’ve never
heard that,” the secretary of state said of Trump allegedly calling the war
dead “suckers”.
“Indeed,
just the opposite. I’ve been around him in lots of settings where there were
both active-duty military, guardsmen, reservists, veterans. This is a man who
had the deepest respect for their service, and he always, he always interacted
with them in that way. He enjoys those times. He values those people.”
The Biden
campaign released a video quoting the president, based on the Atlantic story
and later corroborating reports by the Washington Post and the Associated
Press. Other media outlets, Fox News among them, also corroborated the Atlantic
story.
With the
tagline “If you don’t respect our troops, you cannot lead them,” the Biden
campaign video displayed the alleged Trump quotes over images of military
cemeteries.
At Friday’s
briefing, Trump was asked about his past mockery of the late senator John
McCain, who served in the military and was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “I say
what I say,” he told reporters. “I disagreed with John McCain on a lot of
things. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect him. I respected him but I really
disagreed with him on a lot of things and I think I was right. I think time has
proven me right to a large extent.”
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