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Washington (AP) – US President Donald Trump has rejected a media report that is said to have described fallen US soldiers as “losers.” “This is a bogus magazine story that probably won’t be around much longer,” Trump said at the White House on Friday.
He had previously tweeted: “I never called our great fallen soldiers more than heroes.” The Atlantic magazine report called Trump “a shameful attempt to influence the 2020 election.”
The report, citing four unspecified sources, said Trump said on the occasion of a planned visit to a US military cemetery in 2018: “Why should I go to this cemetery? It is full of losers.”
Trump also denied calling the late senator and veteran John McCain a “loser” and that he opposed mourning flags after his death. Trump wrote on Twitter about his former internal party rival: “I was never a big fan of John McCain.” But “without hesitation” he ordered mourning flags and sent a plane to Arizona to take the coffin with McCain’s body to Washington.
On the way back from an election rally in Pennsylvania to Washington on Thursday night (local time), Trump was already outraged by the report by “Atlantic” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. “It’s a shame that a magazine can write something like that,” he said. If the anonymous sources cited in the report really exist, they are “rabble” and “liars.”
Trump challenger Joe Biden immediately wrote on Twitter: “Mr. President, if you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them either.” At a press conference in the US state of Delaware, he added that the accusations were “horrible.” If this turns out to be true, it is once again clear that Trump is not at all fit to be president and commander-in-chief of the US military. “It’s sick. It’s unfortunate. It’s so un-American, so unpatriotic,” Biden said. He will run against Republican Trump in the November 3 election.
Trump traveled to France in November 2018 to commemorate the end of the First World War. He had canceled a visit to an American military cemetery. According to Trump, this was due to bad weather. Instead of taking a helicopter, Trump would have had to go there by car. Trump has now said that the Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president of the United States, rejected this for security reasons. A related email featured White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany in front of reporters on Friday and referred to several people who had testified about this version. The magazine was not interested in the truth, only in propaganda, McEnany said.
“The Atlantic” wrote, however, that Trump canceled the visit at the time because he feared for his hairstyle and because he did not believe it was important to honor fallen Americans. However, the day after the cancellation, Trump had visited another nearby US military cemetery, also in bad weather. Both Trump and his hair got wet in the heavy rain at the time.
The charge of failing to honor fallen soldiers is a serious charge for a prominent American politician, and especially for the president, who is also the commander-in-chief of the military. The military is very important in the United States. Trump’s reputation among members of the military had recently declined, according to a Military Times poll. Consequently, 41.3 percent of those surveyed wanted to vote for Biden, 37.4 percent for Trump.
