Trump has made himself a practical king of controversy, but according to claims published in The Atlantic, sources allege that Trump has insulted veterans fighting for the USA, calling those who died “losers” or even “suckers” the report notes.
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies. (source)
Now in fairness to Trump, we don’t know if he said this. A claim is a claim, and there are lots of things that people can claim that are found out not to be true at a later point. Indeed, there are a lot of claims being made about Trump, and credibility of anything is not helped by the fact that it is election season, for as I have noted many times, in a power context, people will say and do many things in order to keep, acquire, or depose another man from power. Such is the nature of the game throughout history, and given the particularly rancorous state of American politics, the silly and insane thing that it has always been and what it has become, the toxic parade of complaints of “he said this” and “look at what he supposedly said” doesn’t really help with anybody’s credibility on claims at this point.
However, the statement is, by the way it was expressed, something that Trump COULD have said.
Let me be clear that I am not saying that Trump did or did not say this based on this claim. But take these words and imagine Trump saying them.
Can you imagine him saying such a thing? I certainly can because they are consistent with the cold, callous, selfish, arrogant, self-important, inflated, egotistical personality that those in private have described about him and which he has demonstrated before the whole nation in how he conducts himself toward others. Twitter, for all of the annoying posts that people make on it, has been a veritable microscope into Trump’s mind because while he certainly does not post everything on that account himself, the words chosen are a reflection of his thought processes, and like him or not, his treatment of others is outright insulting and degrading, and would be consistent with such a statement.
Such is the trouble in general with making controversial statements. Remember the children’s story of the “little boy who cried wolf”- the boy always claimed he saw a wolf, but eventually no one believed him, so when a real wolf came and he cried for help, no one believed him and the wolf killed him.
The moral of this story is reflected in Trump’s behavior, for while he may use racism and extremely insulting or divisive politics as a wedge against other people to get what he wants, it can also be used against him. Indeed, I would like to think this statement is not true, but given Trump’s behavior, I cannot tell, because such a statement would not be inconsistent with his words and actions towards other people.
Who is telling the truth then? One cannot say “the media is lying” or they are telling the truth, and the same with Trump. We objectively speaking do not know what the truth is. All we can say is that there is a claim that is not wholly unreasonable at the surface, and that it would take more investigation to ascertain absolute sources and to confirm or deny its veracity.
Likewise, another final point that one should note is that such claims do not apply just to Republicans, but they can be used by Democrats as well. What we can see from Trump’s tenure in office is that he has changed the standards of acceptable political behavior, and this is going to have a major impact on the future, for while the Republicans may have more power, comparatively speaking right now, but at some point, this is going to switch, for American politics works like a pendulum. For those of short memory, recall that it was only a decade ago that President Obama was in power and the Democrats had the majority influence over the country.
Trump will leave office at some point, and when he leaves, his legacy will live on in that his rancorous style of demogoguery will continue with the Democrats. If Trump called Democrats “losers”, what will happen when they call Republicans “losers”? Indeed, given the demographic shifts that I have covered which show a long-term Democrat favor, perhaps even to the point of making the Republican party itself irrelevant, this is very bad news for the Republicans and their supporters.
The future of politics is going to be very interesting in the US. That said, right now what people need is not more claims of “who said what” unless their is direct proof. We need peace badly, and unfortunately, it is unlikely this is going to happen unless the people demand that it is so.