Trump risks alienating swing-state veterans
Candidate’s military missteps could turn off constituency in heart of electoral map
PORTSMOUTH, N.H.— Donald Trump is locked in an explosive feud with Republicans in Washington and has faced humiliating defections from within his own party that have destabilized his campaign on the national level.
But closer to the ground, he has also risked alienating an even more pivotal constituency in the swing states that will decide the presidential election: military communities dismayed by his crude and sometimes offensive comments about the armed services.
Starting last week when he clashed with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a Muslim captain in the army who was killed in Iraq, Trump has reignited a set of controversies surrounding his approach to the military.
He has drawn fresh attention to his derisive comments about Sen. John McCain’s capture in Vietnam, as well as to his own avoidance of military service during the same war.
He attacked Gen. John R. Allen, a retired marine who endorsed Hillary Clinton, as a “failed general” over the weekend, and he joked at a campaign event Tuesday about receiving a Purple Heart, the military decoration for soldiers wounded in combat.
These missteps threaten Trump in the heart of the electoral map. In several important states, his most realistic path to victory hinges on areas with close ties to the military, including northern Florida, coastal Virginia and New Hampshire, and towns near military bases in North Carolina, Colorado and Arizona.
In Portsmouth, N.H., a seaside town close to a major naval installation, several military voters expressed acute doubts about Trump. Roger Palmer, an army veteran, said Trump’s treatment of the Khans and of McCain had been unpresidential.
Palmer, 56, a self-described conser- vative who wore a baseball hat with the Revolutionary War slogan “Join or Die,” said he did not plan to vote for Trump or Clinton in the general election.
“He’s basically a loose cannon,” Palmer said of Trump, adding that he voted for Sen. Ted Cruz in the New Hampshire primary.
“I don’t really want the mainstream establishment, but I do believe you should look presidential — like a leader.”
Should even a segment of Republican-leaning military voters recoil from Trump, it could badly undermine him in states where he is already struggling because of his deep unpopularity with women and racial minorities.
Interviews this week with more than 50 voters linked to the military in five contested states found that Trump may not have driven away many people who were steadfastly supporting his campaign. And a number of veterans who expressed distaste for Trump said they would vote for him anyway, as an alternative to Clinton.
But Trump’s grating comments about the armed services have plainly become an obstacle to courting voters he must convert if he is to overtake Clinton in the polls.
For some Republicans and independent voters intrigued by Trump, his conduct around the military remains a sticking point. In Colorado Springs, Colo., near the Air Force Academy and the headquarters of the U.S. Northern Command, Marianne Quast, the mother of an air force veteran, said she had been drawn to Trump’s bluntness earlier in the campaign.
Quast said she resents Trump’s disrespectful language about the military, including his response to the Khans and his joke about the Purple Heart. She said she trembled at the thought of her son serving under such a volatile president.
“I’d honestly worry about a third world war. All those poor kids still serving. God forbid we elect Trump,” Quast said. “Clearly Trump has no respect for veterans, no matter what he says.”
George Farnan, 79, a retired Navy captain in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., said he was inclined to support Trump over Clinton, but called it a difficult choice. Trump’s disparagement of a Gold Star family had not helped, he said.
“He should have kept his mouth shut, and the Democratic Party should not have stood Mr. Khan up and let him do that,” Farnan said.
Trump took steps Wednesday to shield himself from the escalating criticism, and stress his support for the military. At a campaign event in Daytona, Fla., he was introduced by Michael Flynn, a retired army lieutenant-general advising his campaign. And before a rally in Jacksonville, Trump met with Gold Star families and later said they were “incredible folks.”
But Trump has continued to face reproach from prominent veterans in elected office this week.
McCain released a searing statement Monday invoking his own family’s long history of military service to denounce Trump’s comments about the Khans. On Wednesday, Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he could not vote for Trump.
And advocates for veterans have spoken out against Trump. The Veterans of Foreign Wars called his comments about the Khans inexcusable. And the former commanding officer of Humayun Khan, the slain captain, wrote in the Washington Post that Trump’s words were an “attack on all patriotic and loyal Americans who have sacrificed.”
It is difficult to gauge exactly where the race stands among voters with ties to the military. Trump appears to have a faithful following among veterans and their families; he has described himself as a champion of veterans and vowed to clean house at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
A Gallup tracking poll in July, before the most recent uproar involving Trump, found that veterans were evenly split in their assessment of him. About half viewed him positively and half in unfavourable terms. Clinton fared far worse: Only 27 per cent of veterans had a favourable impression of her, according to the poll.
Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who advised Mitt Romney in 2012, said he expected military voters to play an influential role in 2016 because national security is at the centre of the race.
The Romney campaign, he said, found in its polling that about one in eight registered voters had served in the military.
“Because voters are increasingly factoring into their decisions which candidate they believe can better handle these security issues, the vet community’s voice carries significant weight,” Newhouse said.