Where Trump should serve turkey this Thanksgiving
During his campaign and since his election, Donald Trump has cast himself as an unwavering champion of the military and veterans. “I don’t think anybody’s done more than me,” he told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
Based on some of Trump’s recent actions, the commander in chief sure has a funny way of showing it:
❚ Trump recently skipped a visit to an American cemetery outside Paris to honor slain U.S. soldiers and Marines on the centennial of World War I. (He blamed the Secret Service.)
❚ After returning home, the president also declined to visit Arlington National Cemetery on the Veterans Day federal holiday. (“I should have done that,” he told Wallace.)
❚ In nearly two years in office, the commander in chief has never traveled into a war zone to spend time with deployed troops, something his predecessors did in every major conflict and incursion dating to World War II. (“I think you will see that happen.”)
❚ He dismissed on Sunday the architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, retired Adm. William McRaven, as a “Hillary Clinton fan” and suggested that the Navy SEALs should have gotten bin Laden sooner.
❚ Trump deployed service members as a political stunt, sending 5,800 of them to the U.S.-Mexico border before the midterm elections while railing about immigrant caravans “invading” the United States.
❚ He urged that winners be declared in the close races for governor and Senate in Florida before all the ballots from troops serving overseas were counted.
As head of the executive branch of government, it is Trump’s job to ensure competent management of the VA and other Cabinet-level agenies.
It’s also part of the job description to honor those in uniform, even if you don’t feel like it on a given day or are ambivalent about the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Presidents are expected to show appreciation and devotion to military men and women who are willing to make, and who have made, the ultimate sacrifice for country. That’s doubly true for presidents who avoided military service themselves.
Granted, the consoler-in-chief role isn’t Trump’s strong suit. In his book “Fear,” Bob Woodward writes that a few weeks after the inaugural, the president made an effort, in an unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, to comfort the family of a Navy SEAL killed in Yemen. The experience rattled Trump, and he vowed not to return to Dover.
If consoling military families is too distressing, here’s an uplifting alternative: Make a surprise visit on Thanksgiving or Christmas to the U.S. troops at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.
Too far from Mar-a-Lago or too dangerous? Then drop in on Base Camp Donna in south Texas, where soldiers mark time putting up concertina wire along the border. They’d surely appreciate being served turkey by the commander in chief on another holiday away from home.