[ad_1]
A new report details multiple cases in which US President Donald Trump made disparaging remarks about members of the US military being captured or killed, including reference to Americans killed in the war in the US Aisne Cemetery. -Marne in France in 2018 as “losers” and “fools”.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump. Source: Associated Press
Trump said today that the story is “totally false.”
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 officer who was briefed on Trump’s comments confirmed some of the comments to The Associated Press, including the 2018 cemetery comments.
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.
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 said, Trump referred to the 1,800 Marines who died at the Battle of Belleau Wood during World War I as “fools” for being killed.
Trump emphatically denied the Atlantic report today, calling it “an embarrassing situation” by a “terrible magazine.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as they returned to Washington from a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said: “What animal would say such a thing?”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said: “It is sad to see the depths that people will go to in the lead up to a presidential campaign to try to smear someone.”
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said today: “If the revelations in today’s Atlantic article are true, then they are another indicator of how deeply President Trump and I disagree on the role of the President of the United States.”
“Duty, honor, country – those are the values that drive our service members,” he said in a statement, adding that if elected president, “I will make sure our American heroes know that I will stand behind them and honor their” . sacrifice – always. ”
Beau, Biden’s son, served in Iraq in 2008-09.
Defense officials also confirmed to the AP by reporting on 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 don’t understand. What did they gain?”
The senior Marine Corps officer and The Atlantic, citing sources with first-hand knowledge, 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 Prisoner of Vietnam 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, “Why the hell are we doing that? Guy was a fucking loser.”
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 US President George HW Bush as a “loser” because the Japanese shot him down as a Navy pilot in World War II.
