THIS POST IS PART OF A SERIES, 9/5/20, 9/6/20 AND 9/7/20,
BEST READ IN SEQUENCE.
9/6/20: The blogger was up early on Saturday, still disgusted – but frankly amazed – to have heard that the President of the United States made a habit of insulting veterans and the sacrifices they make.
Could Trump be innocent? I don’t like the man in the least. Still.
This was hard to believe. I started looking for information.
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Vietnam War Memorial, Washington, D.C. |
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“Teach us to distrust and despise those clamorous patriots whose courage dwells but in the tongue.”
Washington Irving
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Let’s be honest, though, even if we like Trump. If he called those who served in Vietnam “suckers,” as my older brother served, and as I volunteered to do as a Marine, it would be perfectly in character with who he was then and remains today . In my case, in the summer of 1969, I asked twice to be sent, but didn’t get sent.
White privilege, I guess. My racist platoon sergeant sent a black guy the first time, instead.
The second time, I changed my mind, after joining our battalion football team. So, off another African American went. I’m no hero; but I was willing to do my part. I’d even argue (as liberal as I am), that I’m ten times the patriot President Trump has ever been or ever will be.
I even pay taxes.
At any rate, I quickly located an article about the president’s comments in Newsweek. There was a one-question poll at the end: Do you believe the president called U.S. soldiers “losers?” When I clicked, “Yes,” the percentages popped up.
Yes: 66%.
No: 29%.
Don’t know: 5%.
*
Trump is the limbo king when it comes to going low.
AS I NOTED in Friday’s post, I’m a former history teacher. I would argue that history shows Trump is perfectly capable of stooping low enough to insult the World War I dead. He’s the limbo king of presidents. I also admit I don’t know for sure what was said. I wasn’t in the room to hear him speak. But we’ve all heard him talk, almost daily, for four years. We know he never hesitates to demean and dehumanize others, whether speaking of individuals or groups.
I know his family history, which doesn’t help.
It should not surprise anyone to know that no one in Donald’s direct
line has ever served in uniform, not since Grandfather Friedrich came here from
Germany in 1885. Grandpa never enlisted. The president’s father scorned service
during World War II and never lent a hand in the fight. Young Donald proved, during
the Vietnam War, that you can’t draft a Trump, no matter how hard you try.
Trump, of course, had already marched out for a press conference Friday afternoon. That’s the only kind of marching he’s ever done. As I puzzled over details Saturday, I realized he had done himself no favors when he spoke. In an effort to prove that he would never trash the troops, he had trashed Gen. John Kelly, a man who had served the nation for 43 years, and who reluctantly agreed to serve as Trump’s White House chief of staff in the summer of 2017.
Kelly didn’t want that job. Who would? He agreed because he thought he could bring order to chaos in the White House. According to friends, he agreed to serve out of a sense of soldierly duty.
I kept checking for information. I learned that no one had to draft Kelly to convince him to put on a uniform. In 1970, when he was 20, he enlisted in the Marines. He got lucky, as I did, and was released from active duty early, under a special program for Marines who wanted to go to college.
Kelly was never shot at in Vietnam.
He went back to school, graduated, and in 1975 rejoined the
Marines, as a young second lieutenant. He rose steadily in the ranks, and was
promoted to brigadier general while in Iraq. In April 2003 he led Task Force
Tripoli north for an attack on Baghdad, and got shot at for real.
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The blogger defends America in 1969, with a toilet brush. |
*
“They were not anonymous to her.”
I STILL didn’t know, with military precision, what Trump had said about veterans behind closed doors. I do know he didn’t help his position Saturday, when he started howling about Jennifer Griffin, Fox News national security correspondent. Griffin defended her original reporting, which backed up the Goldberg story. Now she insisted she had “impeccable” sources. She noted that while her sources were “anonymous” for publication, they were not anonymous to her. She knew these men or women. They were credible witnesses who said they had heard what Trump said. Trump screamed even louder. He demanded, again, that she be fired.
For good measure, he went two levels lower, referring to Goldberg as a “slimeball.”
Later, he went lower still, calling reporters who were pursuing the story, and backing up Goldberg, “animals.”
(Trump is no fan of the free press, repeatedly insisting that his
critics should be fired. See, for example, Jemele Hill.)
I kept checking. At least seven Fox News journalists defended Griffin, citing her careful reporting in the past. “Jennifer Griffin is the kind of reporter we all strive to be like,” said one colleague. “She’s courageous, smart, ethical, fair and a class act. She’s earned the trust of viewers throughout a distinguished career and is credible.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who served with the Air Force in Afghanistan and Iraq, made it clear where he stood. “She’s one of my favorite reporters. Fair and unafraid,” he said of Griffin.
I still didn’t “know” what Trump said in a room where I wasn’t present. And to be honest, I discounted most of what his defenders said. I’d argue that they are, generally speaking, as sorry a crew of bootlickers as ever graced the White House. Mick Mulvaney? Sarah Sanders? “Birther” McEnany?
Please.
By far, the best defense of the president I saw on Saturday came from a veteran named Joe Kent. He’s a former U.S. Army officer, and a Gold Star husband. His wife Shannon was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria last year, while helping in the fight against ISIS. His pain, if you read his story, is palpable. The sacrifices his wife made – that he made – that their children made – are immense.
I’d recommend a read.
For a nearly mirror-opposite response, the story of Kelly Martin, a former Marine, and her partner Gunnery Sgt. Diego Ponga – also killed in combat – is equally good.
I can’t image ever calling a man like Kent, or his deceased wife, a “sucker” for serving. But my problem is that I can imagine Trump.
That’s exactly who the f**k Donald Trump is.
I know, recently, what Trump did to a decorated combat veteran, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. He blocked a promotion the U.S. Army said Vindman had earned, because he could not forgive a hero, whose testimony under oath, called his behavior as president into question. Vindman had told a congressional panel he came forth to testify, out of a sense of duty. He warned that Trump had put U.S. security at risk by refusing timely military assistance to Ukraine.
Vindman was never accused of perjury. But he was soon out, resigning from the army after 21 years.
Roger Stone, who perjured himself to protect Trump, and earned seven felony convictions in the process, never put on the uniform. He still got a pardon from his pal.
That’s who Trump is. That’s exactly who the f**k Donald Trump is.
In any situation, if it’s to his benefit, he will go low.
What else led me to believe Trump could go as low as Goldberg and Griffin and others had reported? I also knew that in the fight against ISIS, in which Shannon Kent was killed, almost all the dead on our side were Kurds. We armed and trained them and backed them with air and artillery support. The Kurds did virtually all of the fighting on the ground, and lost an estimated 11,000 dead. Each lost warrior was no doubt as loved by their families as Shannon Kent by hers. When ISIS was crushed, President Trump bragged about what he had accomplished.
Then he pulled U.S. forces out of Syria, almost on a whim.
He allowed the Turks – historic and bitter enemies of the Kurds – to storm into Syria. He betrayed, by far, our most loyal allies in the region. Then he showed who he was and what he truly valued. He left 800 American soldiers behind, because, as he made repeatedly clear, he wanted some Syrian oil. “We’re keeping the oil,” Trump told an audience of police chiefs last October. “I’ve always said that – keep the oil. We want to keep the oil, $45 million a month. Keep the oil. We’ve secured the oil.” If he had the oil, a lake of spilled Kurdish blood wouldn’t bother him a bit.
Of course, he’d have no idea why Marines died in 1918. He’d never
understand why pilots flew into danger in 1944 or 1967. He’d have no earthly
idea why Gen. Kelly’s son was willing to fight and die in Afghanistan in 2010. All
he will ever really understand is piling up cash.
*
A fourth generation of no service to country.
CAN I SAY, without a scintilla of doubt, that Trump did call Marines, buried in France, “losers?” I cannot, until anonymous sources come forth. I do know he screwed the Kurds and never looked back. I know what he has said about our closest allies, who have fought by our side. When he thought other NATO countries weren’t paying their fair share for defense, he denigrated their contributions. Never once did he salute the thousands of British, French, German, Italian, Canadian, and others, who were killed or wounded in Afghanistan after we were attacked on 9/11. Allied dead, alone, numbered 1,147. A total of 130,000 soldiers from fifty partner nations served there, so no Trump ever had to get bloody.
Not Don Jr.
Not Eric.
Not Ivanka.
And not Tiffany, the nicest Trump.
A fourth generation of no service to country, at all.
Do I believe in my soul that Trump called dead U.S. troops “losers,” and referred to those who served in Vietnam as “suckers?” I do. I know he once suggested that avoiding STD’s was his “personal Vietnam.” Vaginas, he told radio Howard Stern, were “potential landmines” he might step on with bone spur feet.
Having bragged about the many women he bedded, he added, “I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
Sadly, he probably did.
I think I know exactly who Trump is – a terrible human being – not
just a really terrible president. In the past, I listened to him torch Special
Counsel Robert Mueller again and again, and question his love of country. Mueller,
too, was a decorated combat veteran, who fought in Vietnam. He shed blood
while Trump was limping around the ski slopes at Aspen, with sore feet.
Like most Americans, I was shocked when Trump trashed John McCain, and said a man who had been held prisoner for five years and tortured was no hero. At one point, he called McCain a “loser” because enemy gunners shot his jet out of the sky and said he liked people who “didn’t get shot down.”
Then, this weekend, he denied he ever called McCain a “loser,” although the tapes showed he did.
I was shocked again when he attacked the Gold Star mother of Captain Humayun Khan, who died in combat. Trump implied that her Muslim faith made her suspect, although her son’s faith didn’t keep him from fighting under our flag.
And again, I was horrified when Trump picked a fight with Myeshia Johnson, a Gold Star widow, after her husband was killed during a fight against ISIS-backed forces in Niger, in 2017.
I thought any of those attacks were proof enough that a man like Trump would go low at every chance, and go lower and lower again.
“It’s just the way he speaks, he can sound like an asshole.”
Nor am I alone in thinking as I do. Business Insider quoted two sources, supportive of the story in The Atlantic. One former senior White House official said comments attributed to Trump, in that article, clearly resembled his speech patterns, and were “consistent with who he is.” A second source agreed. “I’ve known Donald Trump. It sounds like him. They’re consistent with things that he’s said.”
The Daily Beast also did some digging, and found eleven individuals willing to defend the president – in a weird sort of way. Had they ever heard him make callous comments about our troops?
Well, yes.
But that, they said, was because he hated the wars they had to fight, not the warriors. “The president means no disrespect to our troops; it’s just that the way he speaks, he can sound like an asshole sometimes,” one current senior administration official explained. “That’s how he is [when the cameras are off]… It’s his style.”
I can agree with that. When I hear Trump speak, I almost always
think: His style is to sound like an asshole.
Three of Trump’s defenders admitted that the story about Trump, at the graveside of Gen. Kelly’s dead son, rang true. Trump could be tactless, even when talking about those who had died since 9/11. “This,” The Daily Beast said sources told them, “included the president mentioning that their service in these war zones [Afghanistan and Iraq] was a ‘waste,’ or that U.S. military personnel in these conflicts had ‘died for nothing,’ or that the fallen ‘should have been doing something else.’”
Yeah, “something else,” would have been good.
Not dying comes to mind.
POSTSCRIPT: Writing in the British newspaper, The Guardian, Robert McCrum admits his fiery love affair with America – with the promise of what America could be – has been banked, possibly forever.
“An orange monster, half-clown, half-tyrant.”
It saddens him, he explains, to have to “watch the disintegration of a great society under the leadership of an orange monster, half-clown, half-tyrant.”
McCrum adds:
I have always loved America for
its language, the snap of Twain or Lincoln and the sonorities of Douglass and
Melville. First and last, it’s a society built of words and ideas, those
uplifting expressions of reason and the pursuit of happiness, that quest for “a
more perfect union”, the new world’s dream.
Now the language is reduced to angry, semi-literate tweets,
the vocabulary suitable for a sixth grader, the only happiness to be pursued being
whatever makes the Narcissist-in-Chief smile.
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