DEFENSE
Trump plays defense with the military weeks
before election
It's a difficult situation for the president, who
since being elected has surrounded himself with military trappings.
By LARA
SELIGMAN
09/04/2020
06:51 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/04/trump-military-relationship-election-409257
President
Donald Trump is once again fending off a fresh set of attacks from the
military, this time as he's forced to explain away allegations that he
disparaged fallen and wounded service members, just before a critical stretch
of the election.
Trump and
other administration officials moved quickly on Thursday and into Friday to
blast a report from The Atlantic, which cited anonymous sources saying the
president disparaged wounded and fallen U.S. service members on multiple
occasions and that he asked that disabled veterans be excluded from military
parades.
“It’s a
fake story and it’s a disgrace that they’re allowed to do it,” Trump said
Friday, although reporters from The Associated Press, The Washington Post and
Fox News confirmed elements of the story independently.
“There is a
widespread appreciation for young women and men that are in the military, even
if people don’t necessarily agree with the policy,” said retired Gen. Ben
Hodges, who served as the commanding general of U.S. Army Europe until the end
of 2017. “The fact is that there are so many things that the president has done
or said that makes him vulnerable to accusations like this.”
And they
point to other instances that occurred before the article dropped on Thursday
that led to an “erosion of support” among service members and veterans, said
retired Adm. James Stavridis, the former commander of U.S. European Command and
friend of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and John Kelly, Trump’s former
White House chief of staff.
During his
first campaign for president, Trump prompted outrage when he called the
late-Sen. John McCain, who was captured and tortured by North Vietnamese forces
during the Vietnam War, a “loser” and said he likes people who “weren’t
captured.”
Hodges
called Trump’s criticism of McCain “completely unacceptable and also bizarre.”
“Why in the
world would you say something like that?” Hodges said. “I mean, I didn’t
understand it at all, it made no sense.”
More
recently, several prominent retired generals, including Mattis, rebuked Trump
in June for threatening to deploy active-duty troops in American cities to
quash civil unrest.
“Donald
Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the
American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide
us,” Mattis wrote at the time.
Since then,
Trump has pushed other agenda items that are unpopular among service members
and veterans, including shooting down plans to ban the Confederate flag from
military facilities and rejecting a move to rename bases that honor Confederate
leaders.
The president
has also faced criticism over the years for using the military as a political
prop, in particular his proposals for grand military parades in Washington,
D.C., and his use of the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes to sign a controversial
Muslim travel ban.
“If the
story is factually accurate, it will continue to hurt his numbers with veterans
and military members,” Stavridis said about the Atlantic report.
He pointed
to a recent voluntary survey of Military Times readers that showed a continuing
decline in Trump’s popularity among active-duty service members, and a growing
preference for former Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming election.
And it’s
those voters — military, dependents, veterans and civilians who revere the
military — who are key to his reelection. States that are up for grabs this
cycle, including Texas, Florida and North Carolina, are also home to large
numbers of military families and veterans.
The decline
in support for Trump among that cohort also reflects opposition to the
president’s initiatives to pull out of international alliances and withdraw
troops from the Middle East, Stavridis noted.
“If those
comments are true, it's reprehensible for a president and commander in chief to
speak that way about people who have made the ultimate sacrifice,” Stavridis
said.
According
to The Atlantic, Trump canceled a planned visit to the Aisne-Marne American
Cemetery near Paris in 2018 over concerns that the bad weather would ruin his
hair, and because he did not think it was important to honor American war dead.
The story
also recounts an incident in which Trump — while standing by the grave of
Robert Kelly, the son of John Kelly, at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial
Day 2017 — allegedly turned to his then-Homeland Security secretary and said:
“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
One former
White House official said while they never heard Trump say anything disparaging
about the troops, in phone calls, the president would often “deeply question
the purpose of overseas deployments.”
“When I
heard him speak this way, to me it seemed like again, why are we in these
countries, what’s in the interest of the United States,” the person said. “It
always reflected on his own fear of seeming weak, or things that would make him
appear weak.”
Other
former senior Trump-era defense officials, however, savaged the reported comments.
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“No person
that would call our fallen service men and women losers or be embarrassed by
our wounded veterans should ever hold any elected office let alone be the
president of the United States,” said Mick Mulroy, a retired Marine who served
as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy until last
year. Mulroy noted he did not know whether the allegations were true.
“I’m
disgusted by the president’s words and actions. I don’t have any firsthand
knowledge of the reported incidents, but they ring true to me because of previous
reporting and things Trump has said,” said retired Marine Corps Col. Dave
Lapan, who formerly served as spokesperson for DoD and Homeland Security under
Kelly.
While it’s
not new for current and former military members to express outrage over a Trump
comment or decision — they lined up to criticize his withdrawal from Syria and
decision to abandon Kurdish allies, his move to restore insignia for a former
Navy SEAL accused of war crimes, and his repeated insults of an Army officer
who testified against him during the impeachment — what’s different in this
newest round is the proximity to the election.
In a clear
sign of concern at the White House, top officials on Thursday night rushed out
on-the-record statements denying the story and insisting Trump respects the
troops and honors their sacrifice. Trump went on an extended rant about the
story Thursday night after returning from an event in Pennsylvania. And White
House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany even appeared before reporters Friday to
produce an email from Trump’s travel team in France saying they were canceling
the visit to the cemetery due to weather.
Also on
Friday, after news broke that the Pentagon had ordered the closure of Stars and
Stripes, Trump tweeted that the U.S. won’t cut funding under his watch. “It
will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!”
he wrote.
But the
damage among the military and veterans may already be done, Hodges said.
“The
president makes himself vulnerable because of so many other things, and that’s
why even anonymous allegations like this stick to him,” Hodges said.
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