‘Cadet Bone Spurs’ disparages the service of the U.S. Military and their families

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” – Maya Angelou

In a 1999 interview, Donald J. Trump said of Senator John McCain, “He was captured. Does being captured make you a hero? I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

Trump returned to this in 2015 at the Family Leadership Summit while running for president.

Trump was so proud of himself, he tweeted a video of himself saying it:

Via @fitsnews: “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser’” http://t.co/sgiETvdUqi

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2015

When Khizr Khan whose son, Capt. Humayun Khan, died in Iraq while serving in the Army, gave a stirring speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention accurately saying “Donald J. Trump “sacrificed nothing and no one,” Donald Trump Criticized Muslim Family of Slain U.S. Soldier, Drawing Ire:

Donald J. Trump belittled the parents of a slain Muslim soldier who had strongly denounced Mr. Trump during the Democratic National Convention, saying that the soldier’s father had delivered the entire speech because his mother was not “allowed” to speak.

With his implication that the soldier’s mother had not spoken because of female subservience expected in some traditional strains of Islam, his comments also inflamed his hostilities with American Muslims.

Khizr Khan, the soldier’s father, lashed out at Mr. Trump in an interview on Saturday, saying his wife had not spoken at the convention because it was too painful for her to talk about her son’s death.

Mr. Trump, he said, “is devoid of feeling the pain of a mother who has sacrificed her son.”

After he was elected president, Donald Trump had to make his first call to the widow of a U.S. serviceman killed in action, Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger on Oct. 4, 2017. Myeshia Johnson, the widow of La David Johnson, said the president told her that her husband “knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway.” Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow: Trump said, ‘He knew what he signed up for’:

“It made me cry (because) I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said he couldn’t remember my husband’s name. The only way he remembered my husband’s name is because he told me he had my husband’s report in front of him, and that’s when he actually said ‘La David.’”

“I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name, and that’s what hurt me the most, because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name?”

Having shown us who he is, it is not difficult to believe that the comments reported by Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic is true (and that has now been confirmed by several news sources). Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’:

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.

Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral.

Trump’s understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)

When lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born. Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible. (The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”)

On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

I’ve asked numerous general officers over the past year for their analysis of Trump’s seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations. Some of his cynicism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump’s understanding of the rules governing the use of the armed forces. This issue came to a head in early June, during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of Black people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of defense, lambasted Trump at the time for ordering law-enforcement officers to forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Square, and for using soldiers as props: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.” Read: James Mattis denounces President Trump, describes him as a threat to the Constitution.

Another explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump’s material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” (According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”)

Yet another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump’s pathological fear of appearing to look like a “sucker” himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. “He has a lot of fear,” one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump’s views said. “He doesn’t see the heroism in fighting.” Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has received the bodies of slain service members “many, many” times, but in fact he has traveled to Dover Air Force Base, the transfer point for the remains of fallen service members, only four times since becoming president. In another incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called “virtually all” of the families of service members who had died during his term, then began rush-shipping condolence letters when families said the president was not telling the truth.

Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

As you might imagine, Donald Trump and his spokespersons have vehemently denied this reporting. Unfortunately for them, several news organizations have quickly confirmed much of the reporting.

James La Porta at the Associated Press reports, Trump denies calling US war dead ‘losers,’ ‘suckers’:

The allegations, sourced anonymously in The Atlantic, describe multiple 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 as “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 disparaging of American troops and military families and opening a new political vulnerability for the president less than two months from Election Day.

The Washington Post confirmed the comments with its sources. Trump said U.S. soldiers injured and killed in war were ‘losers,’ magazine reports:

A former senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, confirmed to The Washington Post that the president frequently made disparaging comments about veterans and soldiers missing in action, referring to them at times as “losers.”

In one account, the president told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Trump believed people who served in the Vietnam War must be “losers” because they hadn’t gotten out of it, according to a person familiar with the comments. Trump also complained bitterly to then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he didn’t understand why Kelly and others in the military treated McCain, who had been imprisoned and tortured during the Vietnam War, with such reverence. “Isn’t he kind of a loser?” Trump asked, according to the person familiar with Trump’s comments.

* * *

The Atlantic also depicts a scene between Trump and Kelly at the graveside of Kelly’s son, who died at age 29 in Afghanistan, on Memorial Day 2017. Trump reportedly said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” A person with knowledge of the conversation confirmed this to The Post, and said Kelly came to understand that Trump couldn’t grasp the concept of sacrifice for something greater than yourself.

Trump also couldn’t comprehend why some of the high-ranking military men serving in his administration such as Kelly and former defense secretary Jim Mattis would choose that path. He regarded their rank as a sign of accomplishment, but also of squandered earning potential.

“You seem like fairly talented guys — why would you do that? You don’t make any money,” Trump said, according to the former official, who added of Trump: “Everything is transactional to him.”

The New York Times reports, Trump Faces Uproar Over Reported Remarks Disparaging Fallen Soldiers:

People familiar with Mr. 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, Mr. Trump would marvel at people choosing military service over making money.

Some said they also recalled him questioning why the United States should be so interested in finding captured soldiers, a comment made in the context of Mr. McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Another former official said Mr. Trump had often expressed discomfort with being around people who had been injured, although he has held events with wounded veterans.

* * *

[Former National Security Advisor] John Bolton said he was in the room at the ambassador’s residence when Mr. Trump arrived and Mr. Kelly told him that the helicopter trip had to be canceled. A two-hour motorcade would have put him too far away from Air Force One and the most capable communications array a president needs in case of an emergency, per usual protocol, Mr. Bolton said. “It was a straight weather call,” he said.

While Mr. Bolton said he did not hear the president disparage troops, he added that Mr. Trump did not protest the decision, as he now says he did. “He didn’t say, ‘This is terrible, I have to go out to the veterans,’” Mr. Bolton said. “He accepted it, and that was pretty much the end of it.”

Mr. Bolton added that the reported comments were not out of character for the president. “I haven’t heard anybody yet react to say, ‘That’s not the Donald Trump I know,’” he said.

* * *

A former senior administration official on Friday disputed Mr. Trump’s assertion that he lowered the flags for Mr. McCain without complaint. Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security at the time, said he got calls from the White House complaining that the department had ordered flags lowered to half-staff. “The president is upset, this has gone out too soon and he doesn’t want it to happen,” he quoted a White House aide telling him.

“I was then asked, ‘Would you guys be able to rescind the directive?’” Mr. Taylor said in an interview. He said he resisted, and ultimately White House aides pushed Mr. Trump to keep the flags lowered. But it was made clear that the president “won’t want them down, and he’s angry.” Mr. Taylor, who recently endorsed Mr. Biden, said that he found the episode “pretty astounding and disgusting.”

Even Fox News has confirmed many of the comments. Sources dispute claim Trump nixed visit to military cemetery over disdain for slain veterans, but back up parts of Atlantic report:

Two sources who were on the trip in question with Trump refuted the main thesis of The Atlantic’s reporting — that Trump canceled a trip to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, which is at the site of Belleau Wood, an important World War I battle, because he believed the dead soldiers to be “losers.”

The White House had said at the time the decision was made because of poor weather for flying Marine One and the fact that the cemetery was too far a distance for a motorcade to drive.

One of the sources who refuted the Atlantic’s reporting is not a fan of Trump. Both sources said that Trump was upset about not being able to go to Aisne-Marne and said they had never heard Trump refer to war dead at Aisne-Marne or in the battle of Bellau Wood as “losers” or “suckers.”

* * *

The sources only rejected the claim about Aisne-Marne, and not other accounts where Trump is alleged to have insulted soldiers. Trump has previously gone after the late Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

According to the former official, Trump also had said of the Vietnam War: “It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker.” But sources said Trump did not use that term to refer to war dead interred at Aisne-Marne.

Separately, this former official also heard the president say of American veterans: “What’s in it for them? They don’t make any money?” Multiple sources have confirmed Trump said something to this effect during a 2017 visit at Arlington cemetery, as described in The Atlantic piece, though one insisted Trump was not being derogatory.

Further, regarding accounts of the president’s July 4th military parade planning, the source said that during a planning session at the White House after seeing the Bastille Day parade in 2017, the president said regarding the inclusion of wounded veterans, “That’s not a good look” and “Americans don’t like that.”

So Trump’s canceled visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 may be in dispute, but not much else.

Donald Trump has regularly disrespected America’s service men and women, including those who gave all for duty, honor, country. And that includes military families who also serve.

In a previously unaired portion of her interview with Rachel Maddow, Mary Trump talks about a family anecdote described in her book, “Too Much and Never Enough,” in which her uncle, Donald Trump, threatened to disown Don Jr. if he joined the military.

After  the Atlantic story was published, Mary Trump expressed “why is anyone surprised?”

Breaking. @MSNBC exclusive Mary Trump reacts to The Atlantic report: "Anybody who is surprised by Donald's comments is once again letting him off the hook when he has time after time demonstrated himself to be nothing but an anti-American, anti-military traitor to this country."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 4, 2020

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