![]() Trump’s understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. ![]() Cohen: America’s generals must stand up to Trump He’s demonstrated his commitment to them at every turn: delivering on his promise to give our troops a much needed pay raise, increasing military spending, signing critical veterans reforms, and supporting military spouses. President Trump holds the military in the highest regard. The White House did not return earlier calls for comment, but Alyssa Farah, a White House spokesperson, emailed me this statement shortly after this story was posted: “This report is false. ![]() (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004. There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Read: John McCain’s death brought out the worst in the Trump administration “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. 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. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. 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.įrom the April 2020 issue: The president is winning his war on American institutionsīelleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. ![]() 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. 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.
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