Source: Spencer Platt / Getty
Here’s the thing: You can support Donald Trump and you can support the troops, but it’s getting harder and harder to plausibly say you support both. Actually, it’s impossible at this point.
During a campaign rally Q&A in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, the same ex-president who, in August, bragged that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is a “better” award than the Medal of Honor because that medal is only received by “soldiers” who are either “dead” or in “bad shape” because they’ve been shot so many times, continued to treat the nation’s servicemen and women like they were stepchildren he didn’t really want to claim.
At the rally Trump was asked by a reporter if he believed Israel should retaliate against Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attacks—and whether or not he believed he should have been “tougher on Iran” during his presidency “after they had launched ballistic missiles in 2020 on U.S. forces in Iraq,” which left “more than 100 U.S. soldiers injured.”
The second part of the reporter’s inquiry clearly got under Trump’s skin, which isn’t a surprise considering the commander-in-raging-persecution-complexes never really takes kindly to being criticized in any way, especially when it comes to the abysmal four years during which he sat in the Oval Office.
“What does injured mean?” Trump barked. “Injured means, you mean, because they had a headache? Because the bombs never hit the fort.”
And there it is.
Can’t keep the lies straight
What Donald Trump has described as headaches, the Defense Department described in 2020 as the traumatic brain injuries that 109 U.S. service members were diagnosed with after Iran attacked the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq. But Trump needed to downplay what U.S. troops suffered because, at the time, he responded to the news by claiming, “I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things, but I would say, and I can report, it is not very serious,” according to Rolling Stone.
Fast forward to Tuesday, and Trump responded to the reporter’s question the way he responds to pretty much everything: by beating his chest while lying about his accomplishments, attacking the “fake news” media for confronting him with the truth, and, in this case, continuing to remind us that he really doesn’t care about the troops.
“There was nobody ever tougher on Iraq,” Trump continued, confusing Iraq for Iran, which he would have called President Joe Biden “mentally impaired” for doing. “When you say not tough, they had no money. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for Hezbollah. And when we hit them, they hit us. And they called us, and they said ‘We’re going to shoot at your fort but we’re not going to hit it.’”
“If you were a truthful reporter, which you’re not, you would tell the following: None of those very accurate missiles hit our fort,” he continued. “They all hit outside, and there was nobody hurt other than the sound was loud and some people said that hurt, and I accept that.”
If Trump were a truthful president or candidate, which he is not, he would have responded with the following: Yes, I should have dealt with the situation in Iraq — sorry, Iran…jeez, I’m kind of an idiot — and my personal misunderstanding that no troops were seriously hurt doesn’t trump the official report by the Defense Department that confirmed traumatic brain injuries for more than U.S. 100 military personnel. As always, it is not the media’s job to protect me from my own orangey-white nonsense, and I accept that.
He’s on the record…
Anyway, now is as good a time as any to remind you all of Trump’s long and detailed history of disrespecting veterans and their families.
From our previous report:
Here’s a question: When are these so-called patriots of the Republican party and the MAGA world going to check Donald Trump for his glaring lack of respect for the troops?
They could have denounced Trump in 2015 when the accused-draft-dodger-in-chief said this about late combat veteran John McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
If not then, the loud and proud jingoists who claim they love this country and the servicemen and women who defend it could have checked Trump when an allegation was co-signed by at least one of his own former senior administration officials that he called U.S. military soldiers killed in combat “suckers” and “losers.”
If not then, how about when he allegedly disrespected the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson by telling her the Black veteran who died in combat in 2017 knew “what he signed up for.” (Trump has also been accused of mocking Johnson’s death.)
There is no Democratic president or presidential candidate who could share Trump’s extensive record of disrespecting the troops without the MAGA world calling that person treasonous, unpatriotic, and egregiously un-American.
MAGA hypocrisy continues to know no bounds.
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‘You Are A Disgrace’: At Debate, Kamala Harris Reminds Trump How World Leaders Really Feel About Him
