Trump: Troops’ brain injuries ‘not very serious,’ just ‘headaches’

WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump on Wednesday dismissed concussion symptoms reported by several American troops after Iranian airstrikes on Ain al-Asad Air Base in Iraq as “not very serious,” even as the Pentagon acknowledged that a number of service members were being examined for possible traumatic brain injuries caused by the attack.

“I heard they had headaches,” Trump said at a news conference in Davos, Switzerland. “No, I don’t consider them very serious injuries, relative to other injuries that I’ve seen.”

The comments of the president, who avoided the Vietnam War draft with a medical diagnosis of bone spurs, drew swift criticism from veterans’ groups.

“Don’t just be outraged by #PresidentMayhem’s latest asinine comments,” Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, wrote in a Twitter post. “Take action to help vets facing TBIs,” a reference to traumatic brain injury.

The deputy commander of the U.S.-led military operation in Iraq said the Defense Department was putting the service members through medical examinations to see if the headaches and other complaints amounted to traumatic stress injuries. Some of the affected troops were mere feet away from where the Iranian missiles struck, although they were in protective bunkers, Defense Department officials said.

“I haven’t seen the president’s comments, so I won’t comment on them,” Maj. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich of the Air Force told reporters during a news conference at the Pentagon. “I probably wouldn’t even if I had.”

Earlier in the day, Grynkewich denied that the White House had influenced how and when the military acknowledged that several American troops at the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq had concussion symptoms as a result of the Iranian missile strikes and were being flown to a U.S. military hospital in Germany for treatment.