THIS POST IS PART OF A SERIES, 9/5/20, 9/6/20 AND 9/7/20,
BEST READ IN SEQUENCE.
9/5/20: Friday dawns. The nation readies for a long, relaxing weekend, except for all the germs. It’s a new day, which means we have fresh indications that the President of the United States is a dick.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a reporter for The Atlantic, citing
multiple sources, has exploded a land mine under Trump’s feet. Behind the scenes,
sources told him, the president has often disparaged American soldiers, including
those who died for this country. No one knows for sure how Goldberg’s tale will
hold up; but the president is forced to play defense. Part of his problem is
that allegations in the article sound exactly like the Trump we know and
don’t love.
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“Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
President Trump
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Goldberg focused first in his article on a presidential visit to France in November 2018. Trump was there to recognize the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. The outlines of a similar story were discussed around that time. Trump reportedly decided not to go through with a visit to a cemetery outside of Paris, to honor America’s dead. It was raining, and it was said that he didn’t want to get his hair wet.
Now the article in The Atlantic added damning detail. According to four sources, Goldberg wrote,
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.
The grinding Battle of Belleau Wood (June 1-26, 1918) is still a
part of Marine Corps lore. Fresh American troops, having just entered the war, battered
weary, dug-in German defenders. The Marines had to attack six times before they
could shatter the enemy line. Fighting was hand-to-hand, with bayonets and
rifle butts. It was there in that forest that Marines earned the nickname
“Devil Dogs” from their impressed foes.
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Belleau Wood, 1918. |
According to Goldberg, Trump not only had no idea what had happened at Belleau Wood, he had no idea why he was in France. Sources told the author that at one point, the president inquired, “Who were the good guys in this war?”
That would be the United States, for one.
In another blow to the president, Goldberg added depth to the story of Trump’s well-known feud with Sen. John McCain, a war hero if ever there was one. Again, new details were damning:
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.
McCain wasn’t the only combat veteran Trump attacked when he thought the public would never know. This story was entirely new:
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.)
Doing my duty as a blogger, to both inform and entertain, I should add that the future 41st President of the United States had to bail out over the Pacific, where he was rescued a few hours later by an American submarine.
An experience like that, floating for hours, hoping no sharks
found you, and hoping rescuers did? That could change a man.
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George H. W. Bush, 1944 |
“There’s no money in serving the nation.”
Another new story involved a trip Trump took to Arlington National Cemetery in 2017, accompanied by White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly. Kelly’s son, Robert, 29, had been killed in combat in Afghanistan seven years before. The intent of the visit, on Memorial Day, was for the president to pay respects to the fallen dead of America’s most recent wars.
At best, Trump fumbled the opportunity:
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.
When the best interpretation is that you were responding in a “ham-handed” way, at a cemetery, you have problems.
While Goldberg does not cite Gen. Kelly as a source, several people told him President Trump is incapable of understanding why anyone would die for this country, since there’s no financial gain.
He writes:
“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.”
Goldberg goes to some trouble to bolster his claim that the president has little respect for the military, for its traditions and norms, and for the sacrifices our servicemen and women and their families make. He closes with discussion of Trump’s own fear of death or disfigurement. At one point, the president tells aides to make sure veterans who have lost arms and legs or been disfigured in war do not take part in a July 4, 2019, parade he wants to hold in Washington D.C.
“Nobody wants to see that,” a squeamish Trump says.
*
TO SAY the revelations in The Atlantic article were a shock would be an understatement. And the free press began digging.
Trump and all his usual enablers were forced to rush out, stand bravely before cameras, and deny anything like what had been reported had ever been said by Donald Trump. Why, who would think it!
Before I became a “famous” blogger, I taught American history for three decades. I know you have to get all sides of a story. Even then, you won’t be able to uncover the whole truth. But support for Goldberg’s claims began building. Trump, himself, added credence when he stepped in front of cameras Friday and proceeded to trash Gen. Kelly, who served as his White House chief of staff for a year-and-a-half.
At a hastily-arranged press conference, Trump insisted that Kelly – who wasn’t even cited as a source in The Atlantic – couldn’t handle his job:
I know John Kelly, he was with me, didn’t do a good job, had no
temperament and ultimately he was petered out.
He got – was exhausted. This man was totally exhausted, he wasn’t even
able to function in the last number of months. He was not able to function. He
was sort of a tough-guy. By the time he got eaten up in this world – it’s a different world
than he was used to, he was unable to function.
Trump? In his mind, in his world, he’s a “tough guy.” Bone spurs
don’t hurt in his world, of course.
*
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE continued to accumulate. James LaPorta, a reporter
for the Associated Press, and a former Marine himself, said sources confirmed several of Goldberg’s
claims. During a visit to Arlington Cemetery, the president did ask why the
dead had served. “A senior
Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of events and a senior
U.S. Marine Corps officer who was told about Trump’s comments confirmed some of
the remarks to The Associated Press,” LaPorta said, “including the 2018
cemetery comments.”
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LaPorta in Iraq. |
They performed poorly and deserved what they got.
On the other hand, the Washington Post noted that Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, an adviser to Vice President Pence, tweeted that The Atlantic report was completely false. “I’ve been by the president’s side. He has always shown the highest respect to our active duty troops and veterans with utmost respect paid to those who have given the ultimate sacrifice and those wounded in battle.”
That helped a little, but the Post had other sources:
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.
CNN was next to confirm portions of the original article in The Atlantic. After Trump denied the entire story, including all the punctuation marks, a former senior administration official confirmed that Trump “referred to fallen U.S. service members at the Aisne-Marne cemetery [in France] in crude and derogatory terms” during the November 2018 trip to France.
Jennifer Griffin, the longtime Fox News Pentagon reporter, was also able to confirm key claims in Goldberg’s article. “Two senior officials” who were on the trip to France, she said, supported his assessment. Then she exploded another land mine under the president. Trump, she was told, had called the Vietnam War “stupid,” a statement with which this liberal blogger (and former Marine) might agree. But Trump went too far by 7,600 miles, the distance from San Francisco to Ho Chi Minh City. “Anyone who went,” Trump told others, “was a sucker.” He wondered why anyone served. They couldn’t make any money. “It was a character flaw of the president: he could not understand why anyone would die for their country, not worth it,” one former Trump administration official told Griffin.
It looked bad for President Trump – and that meant President Trump had to respond as
President Trump always responds. Ms. Griffin, he said, “should be fired for
this kind of reporting,” adding, “Fox News is gone.”
*
TRUMP THEN SPENT a good part of his day, playing another
round of golf, #295 since taking office, at his private club in
Potomac Falls, Virginia.
