Trump Reportedly Seethed about Honoring John McCain After His Death, Complained About Lowering Flags: ‘Guy Was a F*cking Loser’
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President Donald Trump reportedly insulted American war dead and lashed out when flags were lowered upon the death of Vietnam War veteran and Sen. John McCain.
A shocking new report by The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg contains anecdotes from sources close to the president detailing his contempt for Americans who died fighting in the country’s wars. According to multiple sources who spoke to Goldberg, Trump cancelled a visit to an American World War I cemetery near Paris in 2018, telling aides: “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 adds.
Trump’s most infamous attack on a veteran was of course his long-running feud with McCain. In 2015, when Trump was running for president, he said of the Republican senator and former prisoner of war: “I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump as president continued to bash McCain, even after his death in 2018.
According to The Atlantic, Trump privately fumed when flags were lowered to half-staff commemorate McCain’s death:
Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. 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,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany did not respond to email and telephone requests for comment.)
McCain and American soldiers who fought and died in World War I aren’t the only losers in Trump’s book, according to Goldberg. He continues:
On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)
Read the rest of the report here.
