“Losers” and “suckers.” We suspect those two words will haunt Donald trump until election day. The president is so bothered by an article in The Atlantic that said the president disparaged service members, dead and alive, that he is frantically fighting back. He held a rare q&a with reporters in the dark last night after arriving back from a rally to deny that he ever said anything bad about those who sacrifice so much for our country.
Per @kaitlancollins: Trump rarely speaks to press upon return to DC; she can't recall when he ever has-but he did last night in the dark to issue vigorous denials: "I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes…" pic.twitter.com/Fc7Lqgsto3
— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) September 4, 2020
Trump is also responding to this paragraph from the article about the late Senator John McCain, a former POW:
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. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser.”
On Twitter overnight, Trump denied saying anything bad about McCain.
I was never a big fan of John McCain, disagreed with him on many things including ridiculous endless wars and the lack of success he had in dealing with the VA and our great Vets, but the lowering of our Nations American Flags, and the first class funeral he was given by our Country, had to be approved by me, as President, & I did so without hesitation or complaint. Quite the contrary, I felt it was well deserved. I even sent Air Force One to bring his body, in casket, from Arizona to Washington. It was my honor to do so. Also, I never called John a loser and swear on whatever, or whoever, I was asked to swear on, that I never called our great fallen soldiers anything other than HEROES.
Of course, there’s a tweet for everything though and in this case, there is also a video of Trump trashing McCain.
Via @fitsnews: “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser’” http://t.co/sgiETvdUqi
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2015
Trump tonight: "I never called John a loser"
Video: Trump calling John McCain a loser pic.twitter.com/CKOBsVoBuo https://t.co/sa2lncSJcm
— The Darkest Timeline Numbersmuncher (@NumbersMuncher) September 4, 2020
The Lincoln Project and Vote Vets are already using the information from The Atlantic report (along with Trump’s own words) for an ad. We suspect these are the first of many videos that will spotlight Trump’s negative remarks about the military in the next 59 days.
Donald Trump called our fallen troops "suckers" and "losers."
They can't speak for themselves, but these 6 Gold Star families speak for our fallen.
Here is their POWERFUL message.#GoldStarParentsAgainstTrump #VeteransAgainstTrump pic.twitter.com/ZnbFevqkNR— VoteVets (@votevets) September 4, 2020
Donald Trump thinks these heroes are losers. pic.twitter.com/BDaadXsWVU
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 4, 2020
Members of the military are also already condemning the president for the remarks, that includes retired Major General Paul Eaton.
Listen to this retired general’s powerful words about Trump’s disrespect of our military pic.twitter.com/LYd1zPzIKr
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) September 4, 2020
This all comes on the heels of a new poll showing that Trump has already lost a lot of military support in the last four years. The Washington Post reports:
This week Military Times came out with a poll of active-duty military finding that 50 percent of them have an unfavorable view of the president (42 percent strongly disapprove) and only 38 percent have a favorable view. They support Joe Biden over President Trump by four percentage points — an extraordinary edge for a Democrat. In a 2016 poll using the same methodology, Trump led Hillary Clinton by nearly 2 to 1. Sixty percent of veterans voted for Trump in the election.
Watch more from MSNBC’s Morning Joe above.