Trump faces uproar over reports
President denies calling soldiers losers, suckers
President Donald Trump confronted a political crisis Friday that could undercut badly needed support in the military community for his reelection campaign as he sought to dispute a report that he privately referred to American soldiers killed in combat as “losers” and “suckers.”
Trump, who has long portrayed himself as a champion of the armed forces and has boasted of rebuilding a military depleted after years of overseas wars, came under intense fire from Democrats and other opponents who said a report in the Atlantic demonstrated his actual contempt for those who serve their country in uniform.
The president’s foes organized conference calls, blasted out statements, flocked to television studios and quickly posted advertising online calling attention to the reported comments. At a news conference, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, grew emotional as he said that his son Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, “wasn’t a sucker” for serving in the Army in Iraq.
“How would you feel if you had a kid in Afghanistan right now?” Biden said. “How would you feel if you lost a son, daughter, husband, wife? How would you feel, for real?”
Biden called the reported comments “disgusting,” “sick, “deplorable,” “unamerican” and “absolutely damnable,” adding that he was closer to losing his temper than at any point during the campaign. “I’ve just never been as disappointed in my whole career with a leader that I’ve worked with, president or otherwise.”
Trump denied that he made the remarks repeatedly over the course of the day and rallied current and former aides who backed him up on the record. “It’s a fake story and it’s a disgrace that they’re allowed to do it,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, insisting that he respected the troops. “To me, they’re heroes,” he said. “It’s even hard to believe how they could do it. And I say that, the level of bravery, and to me, they’re absolute heroes.”
But he railed against one former military officer, John Kelly, a retired fourstar Marine general who served as his White House chief of staff at the time of the reported episode and who he seemed to blame for the article. “Didn’t do a good job, had no temperament and ultimately he was petered out,” Trump said when asked about Kelly on Friday evening. “He was exhausted. This man was totally exhausted. He wasn’t even able to function in the last number of months.”
The furor came at a time of rising tension between the commander in chief and the military leadership over his use of troops against protesters on American streets, his refusal to rename bases named for Confederate generals and his clemency for accused and convicted war criminals. A new poll by The Military Times showed Biden leading Trump with 41 percent to 37 percent among activeduty troops, a stark departure from the military’s long-standing support for Republicans and a danger sign for the president.
Recognizing that, the president sought to smooth over friction with some in the military by abruptly reversing course on Friday afternoon and announcing that his administration would not be closing Stars and Stripes, the venerable military newspaper, by the end of the month after all. “It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!” he wrote on Twitter.
While current and former officials contacted Friday could not confirm some specifics in The Atlantic’s account, they did verify that Trump resisted supporting an official funeral and lowering flags after the death of Sen. John Mccain of Arizona, a Vietnam War hero whose military service he disparaged. And Trump’s assertion Friday that “I never called John a loser” was belied by video and Twitter .
People familiar with Trump’s private conversations say he has long scorned those who served in Vietnam as being too dumb to have gotten out of it, as he did through a medical diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels. At other times, according to those familiar with the remarks, Trump has expressed bewilderment that people choose military service over making money.
Some also recalled him asking why the United States should be so interested in finding captured soldiers, a comment made in the context of Mccain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Another former official said Trump often expressed discomfort around people who had been injured.
John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser who has called him unfit for office, said he was on the trip in question and never heard Trump make those remarks. “I didn’t hear that,” Bolton said in an interview. “I’m not saying he didn’t say them later in the day or another time, but I was there for that discussion.”
The president privately raged about The Atlantic’s article Friday morning, and advisers were panicked about how to counter it. They feared it was the beginning of a constant drip of negative stories from former officials that could sway voters. While Trump demanded that allies knock down the article, aides recognized few senior military officers were willing to defend the president.
The potential for damage was clear 15 hours after the article was published, when Votevets released an online ad featuring the parents of troops slain in Iraq and Afghanistan, each one declaring their son or stepson was not a “loser” or “sucker.”
The report by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, said Trump decided against visiting a cemetery for American soldiers killed in World War I during a 2018 visit to France because the rain would have mussed his hair and because he did not deem it important to honor the war dead.