Trump Reportedly Cancelled Visit to War Dead in WWI Cemetery Because It’s ‘Filled With Losers’ And He Didn’t Want to Mess Up Hair
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In a report published Thursday at The Atlantic, editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg cited multiple sources who say that President Donald Trump made shockingly disrespectful comments when he cancelled a 2018 visit to a cemetery where American WWI war dead were buried, including dismissing the soldiers and marines interred there as “losers” and “suckers” — and complaining that the trip would mess up his hair.
The trip in question occurred during a presidential visit to France two years ago, and the trip itinerary originally included a stop at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery located on the edge of Belleau Wood, just north east of Paris. The cemetery contains the remains of 2,289 American war dead and includes a memorial wall inscribed with the names of an additional 1,060 missing. The majority of the casualties honored there were marines who fought a crucial battle there in in the spring of 1918 that is credited with stopping the Germans’ advance toward Paris.
Trump’s decision to skip the cemetery was decried as an “embarrassment” and stoked a fiery backlash at the time.
The hallowed ground apparently invoked no sense of respect from Trump, however, as Goldberg describes:
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. 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.
Goldberg also reported that his sources told him that Trump expressed a lack of understanding about why America had intervened on the side of the Allies and asked his aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?”
In 2015, while seeking the Republican nomination for president, Trump infamously attacked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), saying “He’s not a war hero…I like people who weren’t captured.”
The White House did not comment for the story before publication, but after The Atlantic report came out, Trump administration spokesperson Judd Deere blasted the accusations in the anonymously-sourced story as “false.”
Not a soul brave enough to put their name on any of these accusations. That’s because they are false. Just another anonymously sourced story meant to tear down a Commander-in-Chief who loves our military and has delivered on the promises he’s made. What a disgrace! https://t.co/NInGxeDcI2
— Judd Deere (@JuddPDeere45) September 3, 2020
McCain was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, who volunteered for service during the Vietnam War and was captured as a prisoner of war in 1967 when his plane was shot down. He was brutally tortured for years, enduring injuries from which he would never fully recover. During his captivity, he rejected an offer for his early release because his father was a high-ranking commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, fearful that accepting that privilege would violate the military Code of Conduct, which said that prisoners of war should be released in the order they were captured, with no favoritism for special status. McCain was finally released on March 14, 1973, after five-and-a-half years in captivity.
Trump’s birthday of June 14, 1946 was assigned a draft number that was “almost last” in the 1969 lottery, meaning that without a deferment he would have been highly unlikely to avoid serving in Vietnam. He had received four student deferments while in college, but that would not protect him once he graduated, but he was then able to obtain a medical deferment claiming a “bone spur” in one of his feet. In 2015, he was asked about the bone spur and said that he could not remember which foot.
