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Donald Trump’s relationship with the US military is ambiguous: The president himself never did military service, but he often described himself as a huge fan of the troops and liked to surround himself with generals, especially at the beginning of his term. However, according to current reports, Trump has also made extremely disparaging remarks in the past about American soldiers who fell in WWI.
During a trip to France in 2018, Trump spontaneously declined a planned visit to the Aisne-Marne US military cemetery near Paris, “The Atlantic” magazine reported. The President of the United States told his staff, “Why should you visit this cemetery? It is full of losers.”
The article written by “Atlantic” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg states that Trump rejected the planned visit primarily because he feared his hairstyle might “mess up” in the rain. The U.S. delegation had officially stated at the time that Trump was unable to visit the cemetery because his helicopter was not ready for take off due to the weather.
In another conversation about the same trip, Trump described the more than 1,800 American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne cemetery as “idiots,” according to the report. Consequently, there are four witnesses to the statements. The AP news agency reported that a senior US Defense Department official had confirmed Trump’s remarks.
The president, for his part, denied the report even later Thursday night, after the White House had already condemned the accusations as “disgusting, grotesque and reprehensible lies.” On the sidelines of a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Trump told reporters: “Someone is making up this horrible story that he didn’t want to go (to the cemetery).” The people who make these claims are “scum and liars,” Trump said. He was willing to “swear I never said something like that about our fallen heroes.”
“Who were the good guys in this war?” Trump allegedly asked.
Critics, however, pointed to the denigration of Trump by the late Republican Senator John McCain. During the 2016 election campaign, Trump said of one of his biggest internal critics of the party, captured during the Vietnam War, that McCain “was not a hero” and that “I like people who have not been caught.”
According to the “Atlantic” report, Trump is said to have revealed historical knowledge gaps during the 2018 trip to France. Consequently, he asked his co-workers: “Who were the good guys in this war?” The president did not understand that the United States was sending soldiers to Europe to support the French allies.
Trump’s Nov. 3 Democratic challenger Joe Biden said that if the allegations in the “Atlantic” article were true, they were “another sign of the disagreement between President Trump and myself on the role of the president. America is.” . If he wins the presidential election, “he will ensure that our American heroes know that I am behind them and will honor their sacrifice, always,” added Biden.
