Trump denies derogatory comments on US war dead
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden declared President Donald Trump “unfit” for the presidency on Friday, delivering an impassioned reaction to a report that Trump — who never served in uniform — allegedly mocked American war dead.
The president and his allies have dismissed the report in The Atlantic as false.
The allegations, sourced anonymously, describe offensive comments by the president toward fallen and captured U.S. service-members, including calling World War I dead at an American military cemetery in France “losers” and “suckers” in 2018.
The reported comments, many of which were confirmed independently by the AP, are shining a fresh light on Trump’s previous public disparagement of American troops and military families. That opens a new political vulnerability for the president less than two months from Election Day.
Voice cracking, Biden told reporters that “you know in your gut” Trump’s comments, if true, are “deplorable.”
“I’ve just never been as disappointed, in my whole career, with a leader that I’ve worked with, president or otherwise,” Biden added. “If the article is true — and it appears to be, based on other things he’s said — it is absolutely damning. It is a disgrace.”
Biden added that “the president should humbly apologize to every Gold Star mother and father, to every Blue Star family that he’s denigrated ... Who the heck does he think he is?”
Trump was alleged to have made the comments in November 2018, as he was set to visit the Aisne-marne American Cemetery during a trip to France. The White House said the visit was scrubbed because foggy weather made the helicopter trip from Paris too risky and a 90-minute drive was deemed infeasible.
Speaking Friday in the Oval Office, Trump denied ever uttering such comments: “It was a terrible thing that somebody could say the kind of things — and especially to me cause I’ve done more for the military than almost anyone anybody else.”
Biden’s critique was personal. The former vice president often speaks about his pride for his late son Beau’s service in the Delaware Army National Guard. As he spoke, Biden grew angry, raising his voice to rebut Trump’s alleged comments that Marines who died in battle were “suckers” for getting killed.
“When my son was an assistant U.S. attorney, and he volunteered to go to Kosovo when the war was going on, as a civilian, he wasn’t a sucker,” Biden said.
“When my son volunteered to join the United States military as the attorney general, he went to Iraq for a year, won the Bronze Star and other commendations, he wasn’t a sucker!” Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015. Trump, who traveled to Pennsylvania on Thursday, told reporters after he returned to Washington that the Atlantic report was “a disgraceful situation” by a “terrible magazine.”
“I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes,” Trump told the reporters, gathered on the tarmac in the dark. “There is nobody that respects them more. No animal — nobody — what animal would say such a thing?”
Defense officials confirmed to The AP the reporting in The Atlantic that Trump on Memorial Day 2017 had gone with his chief of staff at the time, John Kelly, to visit the Arlington Cemetery gravesite of Kelly’s son, Robert, who was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan, and that Trump had said to Kelly: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Trump also denied calling the late Arizona Sen. John Mccain, a decorated Navy officer who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a “loser” after his August 2018 death.
Trump acknowledged Thursday he was “never a fan” of Mccain and disagreed with him, but said he still respected him and approved everything to do with his “first-class triple-a funeral” without hesitation because “I felt he deserved it.”
In 2015, shortly after launching his presidential candidacy, Trump publicly blasted Mccain, saying, “He’s not a war hero.” He added, “I like people who weren’t captured.” At the time, Trump also shared a news article on Twitter calling Mccain a “loser.”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows responded Thursday to the Atlantic article, saying, “It’s sad the depths that people will go to during a lead-up to a presidential campaign to try to smear somebody.”