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WickedsDesire -> RE: Budweiser | A Dream Delivered | Folds of Honor (6/30/2017 9:45:25 AM)
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On the first Memorial Day under President Trump, let’s take the time to honor his valiant battles against ... United States veterans.
Trump never served in the military, dodging the Vietnam War with four deferments before finally falling back on a medical disquality for bone spurs that kept him out of combat for good.
But that didn’t stop him from sometimes waging war on those who did serve — or at the notion of military service itself.
Less than a year ago, Trump was publicly feuding with a Gold Star family who dared to challenge his candidacy.
A moment of silence, please, as we recall Trump’s decorated history of dishonoring service:
John McCain
In the first campaign controversy that made Trump’s White House bid seemed doomed, he insulted the Republican senator — and 2008 Republican presidential candidate — who spent more than five years suffering as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Trump, who spent those same years working at his father’s real estate company, wasn’t impressed.
“He’s not a war hero,” he said at an Iowa summit in July 2015.
“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Trump would only double down on those comments in the next few days, calling the war veteran “yet another all talk, no action politician” who has “done very little for veterans.”
Trump never apologized to McCain, and ultimately said he felt no need to because his polls numbers went up anyway.
Donald Trump mocks John McCain
The Khan family
In one of the most surreal conflicts from the 2016 campaign, Trump spent nearly a week disparaging the Gold Star family of Humayun Khan, a Muslim soldier killed in an Iraq suicide attack in 2004.
Khan’s parents, Khizr and Ghazala, stole the show at the Democratic National Convention when the father challenged Trump’s commitment to his country and its armed forces.
“Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?” Khizr asked.
“Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing — and no one.”
Thus began Trump’s battle with the family — and he fought dirty.
In the next few days, Trump would suggest Khan’s mother remained silent during the DNC speech because, as a Muslim wife, she “wasn't allowed to have anything to say.” He contended that he, too, had made sacrifices because he “created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures.” One of his advisers spread a baseless conspiracy theory that Khizr Khan is a “Muslim Brotherhood agent.”
And in the end, once again, Trump did not apologize.
A veteran in Virginia gave Trump a Purple Heart medal during an August campaign speech — and the would-be commander-in-chief saw no problem in accepting it.
“I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier,” he said.
It remained unclear if the medal was authentic (as Trump argued) or a replica (as the veteran said). But veteran groups and Purple Heart recipients slammed Trump for not even thinking twice about keeping the second hand honor.
“My personal Vietnam”
Trump’s only true battle was in the bedroom.
Years before running for President, Trump boasted on Howard Stern’s show about surviving his brave challenges of sleeping around with women who might have sexually transmitted diseases.
“It is a dangerous world out there — it's scary, like Vietnam,” he said in a 2004 clip dug up by BuzzFeed News.
“It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
Trump has put his money where his mouth is when it comes to show how much he respects vets.
Which is to say: Very little.
In lieu of any service on his own, Trump has sometimes bought his way into veteran affairs by making donations that earned him a spot in, say, a parade or a memorial service.
But there’s little evidence Trump has handed over the war chest of donations he has claimed.
Trump spent the first few months of 2016 claiming he sent nearly $6 million to veterans groups nationwide, but Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold couldn’t find any evidence of any donations.
After Fahrenthold asked and asked about the money, Trump held a news conference in May assuring he had sent out his donations.
It turned out he sent most of them within a week of the press conference or, in some cases, on the same day Fahrenthold interviewed him about the mystery money.
One of his biggest donations, of $1 million, went to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, a foundation that gave Trump an award the year before.
Trump promised in the campaign that he would “take care” of America’s veterans, which, so far, has proven to be about as half-true as his donations were.
His proposed federal budget gives the Department of Veteran Affairs an extra $4.3 billion, but it also cuts back on the cost-of-living adjustments for veteran benefit payouts, and it slashes funds for t
The Limb Loss Resource Center and Paralysis Resource Center, two organizations that help the VA with veterans suffering those ailments.
he Washington Post reported this week that Trump’s claims simply weren’t true. He did not, for example, raise $6 million. And what about the $1 million check the Republican bragged about? His campaign manager insisted this week that Trump did make the contribution.
Except, that wasn’t true, either. The Post reported last night:
Almost four months after promising $1 million of his own money to veterans’ causes, Donald Trump moved to fulfill that pledge Monday evening – promising the entire sum to a single charity as he came under intense media scrutiny.
CNN, meanwhile, reported last night that when it comes to the candidate’s support for veterans’ groups, there have been “discrepancies between the amount of money Trump touts, and the amount actually donated.”
You can find one example right on Trump’s own website, where Trump boasts of saving an annual veterans parade in 1995 with his participation, and a cash donation, “Mr. Trump agreed to lead as grand marshal,” and “made a $1 million matching donation to finance the Nation’s Day Parade.”
Trump did save the event, according to the parade’s organizer, but he didn’t give $1 million to it.
He actually donated “somewhere between $325,000 and $375,000” – about a third of what he claimed – and Trump was not the parade’s grand marshal, a honor reserved for actual veterans.
CNN’s report has not been independently verified by NBC News, but if accurate, the revelations will only make the controversy more severe.
I can appreciate why some observers get tired of the “imagine if a Democrat did this” framing, but in this case, it’s worth taking a moment to consider. If Hillary Clinton and her campaign had been caught making blatantly false claims about donations to veterans’ charities, is there any doubt that it would be one of the biggest stories of the election season? How much punditry would we hear about this being proof about Clinton’s dishonesty and willingness to say anything to get elected?
Postscript: Asked about the January fundraiser, and his claim that he’d raised $6 million for veterans, Trump told the Washington Post yesterday, “I didn’t say six.” Reminded that he did, in reality, use the specific $6 million figure – out loud, in public, on video – Trump changed the subject.
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