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A new report details multiple cases in which US President Donald Trump made disparaging remarks about members of the US military who have been captured or killed, including reference to Americans killed in the war in the cemetery. Aisne-Marne American in France in 2018 as “Losers” and “Fools”.
Trump said on Friday (New Zealand time) that the story is “totally untrue.”
Evan Vucci / AP
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Andrews Air Force Base after attending a campaign rally.
The allegations were first reported in The Atlantic. A senior Department of Defense official with first-hand knowledge of the events and a senior U.S. Marine Corps official who was briefed on Trump’s comments confirmed some of the comments to The Associated Press, including comments from the 2018 cemetery.
Defense officials said Trump made the comments when he begged her to visit the cemetery outside Paris during a meeting after his daily presidential briefing on the morning of November 10, 2018.
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National Security Council and Secret Service personnel told Trump that the rainy weather made traveling by helicopter to the cemetery risky, but that they could drive there. Trump responded by saying he did not want to visit the cemetery because it was “full of losers,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The White House blamed the canceled visit on bad weather at the time.
In another conversation about the trip, The Atlantic He said, Trump referred to the 1,800 Marines who died in the Battle of Belleau Wood during World War I as “fools” for being killed.
Evan Vucci / AP
Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Andrews Air Force Base after attending a campaign rally.
Trump emphatically denied the Atlantic report, calling it “an embarrassing situation” for a “terrible magazine.”
Speaking to reporters after his return to Washington from a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said: “I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes. There is no one who respects them more. No animal … no one … what animal would say such a thing? “
Trump also reiterated the White House explanation of why he did not visit the cemetery. “The helicopter couldn’t fly,” he said, due to the rain and fog.
“The Secret Service told me you can’t do it. … They could never have made the police and everyone else queue for a president to pass through a very crowded and congested area. “
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said: “It is sad to see the depths that people will go to in the run-up to a presidential campaign to try to smear someone.”
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Friday (New Zealand time): “If today’s revelations Atlantic they are true, so they are another indicator of how deeply President Trump and I disagree on the role of the President of the United States. “
Carolyn Kaster / AP
Democratic presidential candidate Former Vice President Joe Biden arrives with pizza while visiting Pittsburgh firefighters.
“Duty, honor, country – those are the values that drive our service members,” he said in an evening statement, adding that if elected president, “I will make sure our American heroes know that I will stand behind and honor them. . his sacrifice – always ”. Beau, Biden’s son, served in Iraq in 2008-09.
Defense officials also confirmed The Associated Press reporting in The Atlantic that Trump on Memorial Day 2017 had gone with his chief of staff, John Kelly, to visit the grave of Kelly’s son in Arlington Cemetery, Robert, who was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan, and told Kelly : “I do not get it. What was there for them? “
The senior officer of the Marine Corps and The Atlantic, citing sources with first-hand knowledge, he also reported that Trump said he did not want to support the August 2018 funeral of Republican Senator John McCain, a decorated Navy veteran who spent years as a Vietnam prisoner of war, because he was a ” loser”. “The Atlantic also reported that Trump was angry that the flags were flying at half mast for McCain, saying, ‘What the heck are … we doing that for? Guy was a p …… loser.”
Win McNamee / Getty Images
War veteran and Senator John McCain often disagreed with Donald Trump during his lifetime.
Trump acknowledged on Friday (New Zealand time) that he was “never a fan” of McCain and did not agree with him, but said he still respected him and approved of everything related to his “first-class triple-A funeral” without hesitation. because “I felt that he deserved it.”
In 2015, shortly after launching his presidential bid, Trump publicly criticized McCain, saying he “is not a war hero.” He added: “I like people who were not caught.”
Trump only amplified his criticism of McCain when the Arizona lawmaker became critical of his scathing style of politics, culminating in a late-night “no” vote that scuttled Trump’s plans to repeal the Care Act. of Health at Low Price. That vote shattered the few partisan loyalties that united the two men, and Trump has continued to attack McCain for that vote, even posthumously.
The magazine said Trump also referred to former President George HW Bush as a “loser” because he was shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II.
