Should we believe Trump’s denial?
America’s armed forces impress certain core values upon their recruits. The Army’s, for example, are loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage.
“In serving your country,” theArmy explains, “you are doing your duty loyally without thought of recognition or gain.” Howcan anyone not get that?
But there’s someone who doesn’t. It’s their commander in chief, President Donald Trump.
As reported byAtlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg lastweek and confirmed by other media, Trump has said that American men andwomen in uniform are “suckers” for serving in the military and that they are “losers” if they are killed or captured.
His inability to comprehend patriotic servicewas on display long before a 2017 visit to ArlingtonNational Cemetery, as recounted in theAtlantic, where the president stood among heroes of ourwars in Afghanistan and Iraq and remarked “I don’t get it. Whatwas in it for them?”
As far back as 1999, according to the Washington Post, Trumpwas questioning the heroism of JohnMcCain, a potential future rival for the presidency, because he had been captured inVietnam. Even earlier, in television and radio interviews, he compared combat inVietnam to the hazards of sexually transmitted diseases. Trump got a draft deferment with a diagnosis of bone spurs.
“If you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to
Vietnam, we have our ownVietnam. It’s called the dating game,” he said on one occasion.
Many Americansmaywant to believe Trump’s fervent denials of what the Atlantic disclosed, but the president is like the shepherd boy in Aesop’s fablewho falsely cried “Wolf!” so often that the villagers did not believe him when itwas true. Little of what he says can be taken as fact without independent corroboration.
Within hours, the Associated Press, the NewYork Times, theWashington Post and even the national security correspondent at FoxNews corroborated essential elements fromtheir ownsources.
Forbes linked to a video ofTrump himself, at a 2015 campaign event in Iowa, using theword “losers” in expanding on his disdain forwarriors likeMcCain, who had been captured.
This is the gist of the new allegations. — WhenTrump withdrew froma scheduled visit to aWorldWar I cemetery near Paris in 2018, he claimed itwas because his helicopter couldn’t fly in rain and the Secret Service couldn’t drive him safely. In private, he said itwas because he feared his hair would be disheveled in the rain and remarked,“Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filledwith losers.” Separately, the Atlantic said, he referred to the 1,800U.S. Marines buried there, fromthe pivotal 1918 battle of BelleauWood, as “suckers” for having been killed. He asked aloud, “Who were the good guys in thiswar?” and said he didn’t understandwhy theU.S. had intervened.
— Trump used the same term, “loser,” on at least two occasions to describe former President George H.W. Bush, aNavy pilot in WorldWar IIwho had been shot down by Japanese forces and rescued by aU.S. submarine. The Bush family has conspicuously refused to supportTrump.
— OnMemorialDay 2017, itwas at the grave of RobertKelly, aMarine lieutenant who had died in Afghanistan, where Trump asked his father, retired Gen. John Kelly, “Whatwas in it for them?” General Kelly, his head of homeland security at the time, would become his chief of staff.
— At a WhiteHouse meeting in 2018 to plan for amilitary parade, Atlantic reported, Trump “asked his staff not to includewounded veterans, on grounds that spectatorswould feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. ‘Nobodywants to see that,’ he said.”
The sources cited by theAtlantic and the other news media remain anonymous, as is true of nearly allWhiteHouse reportage during the reign of this particularly vengeful president.
But in this instance, silence speaks loudly.
Kelly, JamesMattis and other generals who served Trump andwould have knowledge ofwhat theAtlantic reported have refused the media’s requests to either confirm or deny the allegations.
To anyone familiarwith the military’s concepts of duty and honor, their silence is profoundly significant. It is unthinkable that anyone who held four-star rank, as they did, would decline to defend the commander in chief unless the chargeswere true. Trump himself underscored the import ofKelly’s silence by attacking him the day after the story broke. He said he fired Kelly after 17 months because hewas “exhausted,” was “unable to handle the pressure,” and “didn’t do a good job.”
“And nowhe goes out and bad-mouths,” Trump said.
In its own reporting lastweek, theNew York Times said that “people familiar with Mr. Trump’s private conversations say he has long scorned those who served inVietnam as being too dumb to have gotten out of it, as he did.”
And according to his outspoken niece MaryTrump, the president’s brother Robert, who died recently, told her that DonaldTrump had threatened to disown his eldest son when he talked of volunteering for the military.
If theAtlantic’s allegations are true, Trump is unfit to be the person ultimately responsible for the lives of the 2.4 million American volunteers who serve on active duty and in the reserves.
The values of our military— duty and honor above all— are not his values.