Fucktard Trump has repeatedly said stupid things and then denied everything. Trump is fucking retard and he's a liar.

Wall Street Journal

POLITICS

Trump Denies Report He Disparaged Military

President and his aides push back on report by the Atlantic that he called Americans who died in war ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

By Rebecca Ballhaus and Gordon Lubold

September 4, 2020

WASHINGTON—President Trump and his aides rejected allegations in a news report that the president had called Americans who died in war “losers” and “suckers,” as Democrats and some veterans’ groups denounced the president over his alleged comments.

The article published in the Atlantic, which attributed the allegations to four anonymous people who said they had firsthand knowledge of the conversations, said the president had canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he was concerned about his hair and didn’t believe it was important to honor Americans who died in the war.

“Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” the Atlantic article quotes the president as saying. In a separate conversation, according to the Atlantic article, the president described 1,800 Marines who died at Belleau Wood during World War I as “suckers” for getting killed.

The Wall Street Journal hasn’t independently confirmed the details of the Atlantic article. Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of the Atlantic, said in a statement: “We stand behind our reporting.”

Mr. Trump on Friday called the article a hoax and a disgrace and said, “There is nobody who feels more strongly about our soldiers, our wounded warriors, our soldiers who died in war.” On Thursday, Mr. Trump said the helicopter couldn’t fly to the cemetery that day because it was “raining about as hard as I’ve ever seen.” The White House attributed the cancellation to bad weather at the time.

Several current and former White House officials said they had never heard the president use such language about fallen soldiers. A former spokesman for John Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general who was Mr. Trump’s White House chief of staff and accompanied him on the trip, declined to comment on the article.

Mr. Trump suggested it was possible Mr. Kelly had been a source for the Atlantic and criticized his former chief of staff, saying he “got eaten up in this world, he was unable to function.”

The president has made support for the military a central theme of his presidency and his re-election campaign. But he has also clashed with top military leaders in his administration, including over his consideration of deploying active-duty troops to impose order amid racial-justice protests earlier in the summer, which drew objections from Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mr. Esper in a statement Friday said the president has the “highest respect and admiration for our nation’s military members, veterans and families,” while not directly disputing the allegations in the Atlantic article. A defense official said Mr. Esper recalls the flight to the American cemetery being canceled for weather reasons and “never heard any other such allegation as those in the Atlantic until today.”

The article also alleged that when Sen. John McCain, who endured beatings and solitary confinement as a prisoner of war for more than five years in Vietnam, died in 2018, Mr. Trump said: “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral.”

On Thursday, Mr. Trump said he disagreed with Mr. McCain on several issues and that “I was never a fan.” But, he said, “I still respected him. And I had to approve his funeral as president…I approved it without hesitation, without complaint. And I felt he deserved it.”

On Friday, asked if he regretted his past comments criticizing Mr. McCain, Mr. Trump said: “I say what I say.”

Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration, in a tweet Friday morning disputed the president’s assertion that he had agreed to lower the flags after Mr. McCain’s death “without hesitation or complaint.”

“Mr. President, this is not true,” tweeted Mr. Taylor, who has been a vocal Trump critic since leaving the administration. “You were angry that DHS notified federal buildings to lower the flags for Sen. McCain. I would know because your staff called and told me.”

It took until 4 p.m., two days after Mr. McCain’s death, for the White House to issue a statement from the president announcing the flag would be flown at half-staff.

In 2015, during his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said of Mr. McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” He also described Mr. McCain as a loser for losing the 2008 election to Barack Obama.

In 2019, the White House wanted the U.S. Navy to move “out of sight” the warship USS John S. McCain, named for the senator’s father and grandfather, ahead of the president’s visit to Japan, the Journal reported.

Since Mr. McCain’s death in 2018, Mr. Trump has continued to attack the senator. The president complained that he wasn’t thanked for giving Mr. McCain “the kind of funeral that he wanted” and saying at an event in Lima, Ohio: “I have to be honest, I’ve never liked him much.”

Mr. Trump has said he didn’t serve in Vietnam because he received student deferments and a medical deferment related to a bone spur in a foot.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called the reported remarks disgusting and said that if the Atlantic report is true, Mr. Trump should apologize. “It affirms what most of us believe to be true: That Donald Trump is not fit to be commander-in-chief,” Mr. Biden said in his hometown of Wilmington, Del.

The former vice president grew visibly angry during his remarks, and said of his late son Beau, who served in the military: “He wasn’t a sucker.”

Will Goodwin, director of government relations for VoteVets, a liberal group that supports veterans, said the alleged comments in the article were “not surprising” but “egregious.”

“Donald Trump does not respect our men and women in uniform. He does not respect their families. He does not respect veterans. And worse, he has matched his vile language with action,” Mr. Goodwin said.

The Trump campaign on Friday published a list of statements from current and former White House aides rebutting the Atlantic article. Former press secretary Sarah Sanders called it “total BS.” Dan Scavino, deputy chief of staff for communications, said he was with the president in France and called the article “complete lies.”

Appeared in the September 5, 2020, print edition as 'Trump Denies Report He Disparaged Military.'