Monday, previous President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign staged an event at Arlington National Cemetery, treating the cemetery as a political venue despite federal laws that explicitly prohibit such behavior.
Reports said a “verbal and physical altercation” broke out during the wreath-laying ceremony when Trump's staff tried to enter a cemetery area reserved for recently deceased service members.
The incident, which has sparked a storm of controversy, is part of a broader pattern. Trump has for years displayed a reckless attitude toward veterans and a general lack of knowledge of military history.
Trump angered veterans groups just two weeks ago when he said the Presidential Medal of Freedom was better than the Congressional Medal of Honor because it didn’t involve sacrifice. The former president and 2024 presidential candidate quickly reinforced those comments.
“[Trump] “I can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than myself,” said a retired four-star general. Atlantic Ocean In 2020. “He believes that anyone who does anything when there is no direct personal gain to be had is a fool. There is no money in the service of the nation.”
according to Atlantic OceanIn conversations with his senior staff, Trump has called American soldiers who died in the war “losers” and “suckers.” Trump denies this. In 2018, sources told the newspaper that the former president canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France because he didn’t want the rain to ruin his hair.
“Why would I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” Trump apparently said. During the same visit, Trump asked his aides, “Who are the good guys in [World War I]”?”
Since then, Trump's former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, has confirmed many of the claims in the story, adding that at one point, Trump did not want to be seen with military amputees because “it didn't look good on him.” [him]”.”
Trump had visited Arlington with Kelly in 2017, when Kelly was secretary of homeland security. Kelly’s son, Robert, was killed in Afghanistan and is buried in Arlington. Standing by his grave, Trump turned to Kelly and said, “I don’t understand. What was in it for them?”
Sometimes, Trump’s neglect has had a direct impact on soldiers’ families. In 2017, the then-president reduced a soldier’s widow to tears when he called to offer his condolences and forgot her husband’s name. He apparently told her that her husband “knows what he’s signing up for.”
During his 2016 campaign, Trump insulted former Senator John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War. “He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured,” Trump said.
McCain had been a prisoner of war at a notorious prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton” since 1967. When McCain died, Trump reportedly said, “We will not support this loser's funeral.”
Trump is “the person who thinks that those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as prisoners of war, are all ‘fools’ because they ‘don’t benefit from it,’” Kelly said.
Trump even got into a tussle with retired Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the killing of Osama bin Laden and the capture of Saddam Hussein. “Wouldn’t it have been great if we had gotten Osama bin Laden much earlier, wouldn’t it?” McRaven had just quit his college job because he was diagnosed with leukemia.
During the Vietnam War, Trump avoided the draft because of bone spurs. However, he claimed that his time at a prep school gave him “more military training than a lot of guys who go into the military.” In the 1990s, Trump said that dating while trying to avoid sexually transmitted diseases was his own personal Vietnam—an act of bravery that earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor.
On some level, Trump simply doesn’t understand war. In 2017, according to the Daily Beast, Trump got into what one attendee described as a “really weird” argument with Vietnam veterans about Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a herbicide used during the Vietnam War that caused lasting health problems for those exposed to it and their descendants.
When the subject was brought up, Trump asked if Agent Orange was “that thing from that movie.” The veterans replied that it was Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film. End of the world now Napalm was pictured, not Agent Orange.
Trump replied, “No, I think that stuff is from that movie.”
