September 7, 2020: Did Trump Insult Dead Marines?

 

THIS POST IS PART OF A SERIES, 9/5/20, 9/6/20 AND 9/7/20, BEST READ IN SEQUENCE.

9/7/20: Having gone golfing on Saturday, and having golfed avidly on Sunday, and having worked his Twitter thumbs to exhaustion (70 Twitter posts on Sunday, alone), Trump hunkered down at the White House on Labor Day. With nothing better to do, it struck him as a phenomenal idea to hold another press conference. All such conferences now are really lengthy diatribes against political opponents, and anyone else Donald feels like insulting that day.

 

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“John McCain liked wars. I will be a better warrior than anybody, but when we fight a war, we’re going to win them.” 

President Trump

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The president’s overarching problem is that when he opens his mouth and words drip out in random order, an overwhelming majority of America’s assume he’s lying. In a Gallup poll earlier this summer, only 36% of respondents said they believed the president was “honest and trustworthy.” 

That number was elevated by the 72% of Republicans who believed, against all evidence, that the Easter Bunny was real.

 

News that the president had called dead Marines, killed during World War I, as “losers,” and referred to men and women who served in Vietnam “losers,” continued to dominate the news. I kept searching for insight. I found several brutal responses aimed at the president, and one defense. The latter was a letter signed by “about 674” veterans – an odd phrase, I thought – and shared with Breitbart on September 4. Signatories included at least three Medal of Honor recipients – and all respect to those brave men. 

That letter, however, seemed to indicate that minds had snapped shut like steel traps, without catching any facts. 

“Recent baseless media attacks against President Trump from anonymous sources,” the letter reads, “are just another example of the depths to which the President’s opponents are willing to descend to divide the nation and meddle in this election.”

 

So, was I wrong to believe Trump was capable of stooping so low? I could not help but notice that almost all the “denials” were focused on the visit to France in 2018. A great deal was being made of the president’s decision to skip the visit to the cemetery to pay respects to our fallen soldiers from World War I. The president’s defenders seemed to want to prove that safety concerns related to bad weather were why the president aborted the trip, not narcissism and worry about his hair. Aides insisted they had not heard him call the dead Marines “losers.” 

The problem with the “I didn’t hear it” defense is that it doesn’t prove Trump didn’t say what sources said he said. If four people say they heard it – and at least four anonymous sources say they did – then, if those sources would come forward, you could be nearly certain the president said what they said he said. 

I kept checking.

 

I found one tweet from a veteran, which I think adds great credence to my position, that Trump would be capable of going so low. It came from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s brother, who had also run afoul of President Trump.

   

I would argue that the treatment of the two brothers proves almost beyond doubt that President Trump doesn’t have respect for our servicemen and women, and only cares about himself. 

We know Eugene Vindman’s brother was driven from the service by toadies in the Trump administration (the same enablers who defend him now). Lt. Col. Eugene Vindman has said quite publicly that after he filed his own whistleblower complaint, he was retaliated against by Trump officials. He, too, decided to take off the uniform he had worn with pride for many years.

 

I also found a story in The Hill, from September 4, summarizing comments from retired Lt. General Mark Hertling, in a talk with Don Lemon on CNN. Hertling told his host that he had spoken with active duty military as well as veterans. These men and women were “furious” when they heard reports of the president’s comments. “It’s tough to speak out right now if you’re an active-duty serving general officer,” Hertling said in an interview. “By not saying anything, they’re saying a lot.” 

(And if you do cross this president, your career is ruined, and you end up like the Vindman brothers.) 

I kept trying to sort out all the stories I could find. Multiple news outlets had confirmed most of the claims Jeffrey Goldberg made in The Atlantic. At least a dozen people inside the Trump orbit had apparently heard Trump disparage the troops. And on multiple occasions. (I even wondered: If The Atlantic says it had a source, and The New York Times said it had a source, and Jenifer Griffin of Fox News said she had a source, could they all be using the same anonymous source, so that where it looked like three witnesses to conversations had surfaced, there was really one?) 

Like a man possessed, I kept digging, deeper and deeper in the same hole, looking for gold nuggets of proof.

 

Let’s just say, I kept finding flakes. I checked Trump’s Twitter feed. If you carry out a word search, you’ll discover he has used the word “loser” to describe critics and enemies dozens of times. Crass, no-class insults are the president’s stock in trade. You know, if any president could ever refer to U.S. war dead as “losers,” and those who served in Vietnam as “suckers,” Trump is the one. 

On Twitter, the president’s habit of going low is always on view. Anthony Scaramucci, who Trump hired briefly to be his press secretary, is suddenly “a loser who begged to come back” after the president canned him. John Kasich, former Republican governor of Ohio, is “another loser.” CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “Fredo,” as Trump likes to call him, is a loser. So are the “lowlifes and losers” protesting in New York City right now. The people who work at CNN, are even worse, “sick losers” as the president calls them, in just one of countless attacks on the free press. Mitt Romney gets the ALL-CAPS treatment from the man with no class: “LOSER!” Chuck Schumer is a “totally overrated loser.” There are “RINO losers” too. Some “losers,” get nicknames: Elizabeth Warren is “Pocahontas,” Michael Bloomberg is “Mini Mike.” John Harwood, a reporter, is a “total loser,” which I assume is the worst kind of all. 

Then again, there are “stone cold losers” working for the Washington Post.

 

In fact, as soon as the Goldberg story broke in The Atlantic, Trump went on offense. To prove he would never call dead Marines from 1918 “losers,” he retweeted a post by Matt Schlapp, a soulless enabler if ever there was one. Schlapp had posted simplistically: “The Losers and Suckers work for the Atlantic. They are colluding with the socialists to stop Trump.” 

(Let’s just say one does not go wisely to Trump’s Twitter feed in search of facts, or even cogent analysis of current events. One goes for the lies, the polemics, and the inadvertent comedy.) 

You could even find Trump tweet-denying that he called John McCain a “loser.” Then you could check around a little, as noted yesterday, and easily find the tape and watch when he did.

 

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A press conference proves the president will always go low. 

IT’S TUESDAY by the time I complete this post. And I still can’t say with lead pipe certitude, that Trump said what Jeffrey Goldberg says sources said he said. I am not the only person, however, to notice that Gen. Kelly has remained silent, despite Trump’s cheap shot attacks. 

But I read through the transcript of the president’s Monday “press conference,” looking for new insight. And I would argue they provide all the evidence we need to decide what kind of man Donald Trump is. Is he capable of going to lows even those of us who don’t like him could never imagine? 

Absolutely.

 

This was vintage Trump on display, wine soured to vinegar, with a hint of arsenic. Here, on public display, the president went just as low as any of the anonymous sources in The Atlantic had said. At one point, Trump explained his dislike for Sen. McCain. The man is dead. You’d think he could let it go; but that’s not who Donald J. Trump is. “John McCain liked wars,” he claimed. “I will be a better warrior than anybody, but when we fight a war, we’re going to win them.” 

McCain, imprisoned and tortured for five years, “liked wars?” And Cadet Bone Spurs was a “better warrior than anybody?” 

Even I was a better warrior than Trump – and I was a supply clerk in the Marines, about as unheroic a job as there can possibly be.

Marine supply clerk - in California, during Vietnam War.