May 28, 2018: Trumps Don't Serve, They Tweet

 

5/28/18:  The president gets Memorial Day off to a decent start at 6:01 a.m., tweeting a link to a story about a little boy he met last year at the Arlington Cemetery grave of his father. 

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Those who believed in honor would know you to be a man without honor.

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With that formality out of the way, Trump makes the rest of the day about himself. His second tweet at 7:58 a.m. reads: 

Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at how well our country is doing today. Best economy in decades, lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics EVER (& women in 18years), rebuilding our Military and so much more. Nice!

 

No, Mr. Trump, “those who died for our great country” would not be “happy and proud” were they able to rise from honorable graves and see what you’ve been up to. Those who died at Lexington and Concord would consider your attacks on the First Amendment a disgrace. 

Black soldiers, cut down by the hundreds while trying to capture Ft. Fisher in 1864, would not be proud to hear you call black NFL players who protest “sons of bitches.” They would not be happy to hear you say those who protest – who protest against you – should maybe not be in this country. (See: 6/5/18.) 

The attack on Ft. Fisher.

Every Jewish soldier who died under the Stars and Stripes would cringe at your comments in the wake of the Charlottesville riots, when you said there were “good people” on both sides. 

The immigrants who came here, fleeing starvation in Ireland, religious hatred in Poland and repression in Russia, who learned to love their adopted country, who fought under its flag, would not see you as you see yourself. They would see you as a man who tramples on the values that make this nation great. Pfc. Diego Rincon, whose family fled Columbia as refugees, and who died at 19 in Iraq, winning posthumous U.S. citizenship, would see where you stand on cutting the number of refugees allowed to enter the U.S. Rincon would not be proud of you. 

Those who spent time in a North Vietnamese prison and died from torture and abuse – comrades of Sen. John McCain – would rise from their graves to denounce you for the hypocrite you are.

 

Lt. Ashley White, killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2011, posthumously awarded a Bronze Star, would consider your treatment of women, your lying to even your wife, and would stand aghast. 

Those who believed in honor would know you to be a man without honor. 

Those who served because they believed they had a duty to serve and went to war in 1812 and 1846 and 1898 would consider your family’s history, of never serving at all, and shake their heads in disbelief. 

Those who thought freedom was always worth fighting for, and by that meant freedom for all, they would not be proud of you today. 

They would be appalled.

 

 

On this Memorial Day the presidential historian Jon Meacham captures the danger of Donald J. Trump: 

The effect on the life of the nation of a president inventing conspiracy theories [emphasis added] in order to distract attention from legitimate investigations or other things he dislikes is corrosive. The diabolical brilliance of the Trump strategy of disinformation is that many people are simply going to hear the charges and countercharges, and decide that there must be something to them because the president of the United States is saying them.