A few more points on Trump’s latest scandal:
After The Atlantic reported on Thursday that Donald Trump had privately trashed American war dead as “suckers” and “losers,” the White House, the president’s 2020 campaign, and a broad array of Trump loyalists activated to aggressively denounce the report as fictitious and absurd.
In The Daily Beast’s interviews with 11 senior administration officials, Trump aides, Republican operatives, and former and current friends of the president, several of them mounted a curious defense of Trump. Yes, they admitted, the commander in chief at times makes callous, tone-deaf comments about American military personnel behind closed doors. But it’s because he hates the wars they’re forced to fight, not the service members themselves.
“The president means no disrespect to our troops; it’s just that the way he speaks, he can sound like an asshole sometimes,” one of these sources, a current senior administration official, told The Daily Beast. “That’s how he is [when the cameras are off]… It’s his style.”
Sometimes? He is always an asshole. And let’s not pretend his words don’t mean exactly what they mean. He thinks anyone who goes into the military is a sucker and he thinks those that are killed or disabled are losers for failing to come out of it whole. His words are not vague or inscrutable.
Some of these sources defending President Trump and pushing back on The Atlantic’s story agreed to go on the record. Others would only speak on background and in an anonymous capacity—even after the White House trashed the magazine for relying on such nameless sources. (The president on Friday afternoon called the story a “hoax,” even though the Associated Press and Fox News had confirmed key details of the original piece.)
Some of these individuals close to the president did concede there was one part of Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s article that rang true to them: the anecdote about Trump joining John Kelly, his former White House chief of staff, on a visit to the grave of Kelly’s son Robert—who was killed in the war in Afghanistan—and coldly asking Kelly, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Three people with direct knowledge of the president’s private remarks in the past three years about Robert Kelly, as well as other Americans who’ve died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that Trump had made similar-sounding comments to them, too. This included the president mentioning that their service in these war zones was a “waste,” or that U.S. military personnel in these conflicts had “died for nothing,” or that the fallen “should have been doing something else.”
However, these sources, who would only speak on the condition of anonymity, all independently insisted that Trump was not disrespecting the U.S. war dead; he was merely stating a belief that they should not have been sent overseas to fight and die in these wars in the first place. Each said that the president often has a brash, ill-mannered way of talking that can obscure what they believe to be his intended message, especially in moments when Trump is trying to convey sympathy or empathy.
Bullshit. He blames the troops for losing.
Here is what he said about John McCain:
“He lost and let us down. I’ve never liked him as much after that. I don’t like losers,”
Here’s what he said to the generals when they gathered to attempt to give him a 6th grade education on national security. From “A Very Stable Genius”:
Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.
“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”
He blames the military, including the soldiers on the ground, FOR LOSING. That’s what he means when he calls them losers.
Trump doesn’t hate war. Fergawdsakes, is there anything in his personality that would make that believable? Of course not. He just believes America should use the massive force at its disposal to “win” them.
Soldiers are losers and suckers for joining up in the first place when they could be making money and for getting injured and dying and for losing any battles and wars in which they participate. You see, if he ever went to war, he’d WIN! That’s all that matters.