US veterans and soldiers divided over Trump
calling war dead ‘suckers’
US military
Some service members expressed skepticism after
bombshell report prompted an outpouring of condemnation
Edward
Helmore
Mon 7 Sep
2020 20.38 BSTLast modified on Mon 7 Sep 2020 20.39 BST
Donald
Trump was struggling to retain support of active US service members, according
to polls, even before last week’s bombshell report that the commander-in-chief
referred to fallen and captured US service members as “losers” and “suckers”.
But some veterans and military family members remain conflicted.
The
Atlantic magazine’s story – in which four sources close to 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 – prompted an outpouring of
condemnation, and comes less than two months before the 3 November election.
Several
former Trump administration officials confirmed the report. Trump and the White
House have denied it, with the president insisting: “There is nobody feels more
strongly about our soldiers, our wounded warriors, our soldiers that died in
war than I do.”
Polls in
2016 showed active service members preferred Trump to Hilary Clinton by a large
margin, but polling from late July and early August conducted by the Military
Times showed the continued steady drop in opinions of the commander-in-chief
since he was elected, with almost 50% of respondents reporting an unfavorable
view.
“I recommend
all veterans to use their Military pics as a profile pic to let Trump know how
many people he has offended by calling fallen soldiers losers and suckers.
#NewProfilePics,” army veteran David Weissman, who describes himself as an
“apologetic” former Trump supporter, wrote on Twitter last week, in a post that
went viral.
Thomas
Richardson, a retired member of the Army’s 82nd airborne, told the Associated
Press that he was rankled by the reports. “Usually, you don’t choose those
kinds of missions. You agree to serve and you agree to go where your assignment
is.”
An
active-service member stationed at the United States Military Academy at West
Point military academy told the Guardian on Monday that the president’s
reported comments were not necessarily surprising.
“I wouldn’t
put it past him,” they said. “But you don’t get to pick your commander in
chief, and I take what he says with a grain of salt.”
The service
member added: “Whatever political leaders say, we don’t put much store in it.
We’re apolitical. We know they’re going to change out in four or eight years.
Yes, they are in charge of us, but our other leaders are the ones who do the
groundwork so we put our faith in them.”
However,
some others have expressed skepticism at the report, with some veterans and
military families divided.
“If you
twist his words or just take one thing out of context, you’ll always find a way
to hate him,” Katie Constandse, 37, who is married to a soldier stationed at
Fort Bragg, told the Associated Press. “He’s a human being. He takes a lot of
stuff. I don’t see how he has survived for almost four years – the constant
barrage of anger toward him.”
“We don’t
need someone who is warm and cuddly,” she said.
A Pew
Research poll from 2019 showed that veterans remained largely supportive of
Trump’s leadership of the nation’s armed forces – which came after the death of
Republican senator and Vietnam war hero John McCain, who Trump had criticized
for being captured.
Jon Soltz,
chairman of VoteVets, a progressive, anti-Trump veterans organization that says
it represents 700,000 veterans and their families, tweeted last week: “I wish
there was more outrage about Trump lying about the dignified transfer of the
fallen for political reasons, because as a veteran it really disgusts me.”
The
Military Times poll based on 1,018 active-duty troops surveyed in late July and
early August found that nearly half of respondents (49.9%) had an unfavorable
view of the president, compared to about 38% who had a favorable view. The poll
found that 41% said they would vote for Trump’s Democratic presidential rival
Joe Biden, if the election was held that day, while 37% said they plan to vote
to re-elect Trump.
According
to the poll, Trump has struggled to regain support among active service
members, despite efforts to solidify his bond with the military that included
delivering the graduation speech to cadets at West Point in June and talking-up
a “colossal” $2tn rebuilding of US military might.
Trump’s
West Point address came weeks after he ordered the area around the White House
cleared demonstrators using teargas and other chemical irritants so that he and
defense secretary Mark Esper, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Gen
Mark Milley could walk across Lafayette Square.
“What we
have here is an effort to use the military to partisan advantage to the point
of potentially putting troops in the streets to confront protesters [and] to present
himself as the law and order president,” said Risa Brooks, professor of
political science at Marquette University, told the Guardian at the time.
While Esper
later claimed he had no knowledge of the plan, Trump’s threat to use the
Insurrection Act to deploy troops on US streets received strong push-back from
former military commanders. James Mattis, the Marine general who resigned as
secretary of defense in 2018, voiced his opposition to Trump’s leadership.
“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 in a statement published by the Atlantic.
Trump has a
long history of disparaging veterans, however. In 1999, while toying with a run
for president as the Reform Party candidate, he attacked McCain.
“Does being
captured make you a hero? I don’t know. I’m not sure,” Trump said in the
interview with CBS. Later, in 2015, he said the senator was “not a war hero”
and declared, “I like people who weren’t captured.”
He also
reportedly called his top generals “losers” and “a bunch of dopes and babies”
during a 2017 meeting at the Pentagon, according to the authors of A Very
Stable Genius.
But Trump
also, who avoided military service by citing a bone spur in his foot, appears
to hold conflicting views.
In 2015, he
told The Washington Post he felt “always felt somewhat guilty” about not
serving in the military. In what he described as t an effort to make up for his
guilt, Trump said he “spent a fortune” – reportedly $1m – to build a Vietnam
memorial in his hometown.
“I was a
very strong opponent of the Vietnam War,” Trump said at the memorial’s
dedication, “but I also recognized that the people who went to fight were great
Americans.” He has also said his time in military school helped him to learn “a
lot about discipline, and about channeling my aggression into achievement”.
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