Trump’s Contempt for America’s Military and its Veterans
“He’s [John McCain] not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Trump said to his chief of staff John Kelly on Memorial Day, 2017, when the two men visited the Arlington Cemetery gravesite of Kelly’s son, Robert, who was killed in action in Afghanistan.
Fox News Reporter Jennifer Griffin confirmed earlier reports that President Trump refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 honoring the 1800 US Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood because they were “suckers” for getting killed. “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
“What the f--k are we doing that for? The guy [John McCain] was a f--king loser.” (Remarks to a senior Marine officer after flags were flown at half-mast in 2018 for the funeral of Senator John McCain.)
Inspired by a Bastille Day military parade in Paris in 2017, then President Trump called for a similar parade in Washington. But he told his chief of staff, John Kelly, that—unlike the Paris affair—”I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.” Kelly protested that such individuals were true heroes. “I don’t want them,” Trump replied. “It doesn’t look good for me.”
In a statement, Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly wrote:
[Donald Trump is] “a person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ [This is] a person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ [This is a] person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family . . . and rants that heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”