Trump’s Sullen Disrespect for Veterans

 

It seems Trump has no allegiance to serving your country. It’s just a means of acquiring power.

Prologue

In the first installment of the iconic film The Godfather, Sonny Corleone reacts to his brother Michael’s announcement that he has enlisted in the military to fight in World War II:

Sonny [about soldiers]: They’re saps…because they risk their lives for strangers.

Michael: They risk their lives for their country.

Sonny: Your country ain’t your blood. You remember that.

Don Vito Trump

The above words were just lines in a movie script. At the Aisne-Marne Cemetery in France, where world leaders gathered in November 2018 to honor fallen soldiers, words reminiscent of the Godfather’s son were uttered by none other than the president of the United States. According to John Kelly, Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of Staff, Trump branded the war dead as “suckers…because there’s nothing in it for them.”

According to Kelly, Trump resisted attending the event, pleading, “Why should I go to the cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”

Captain “Bone Spurs”

Thus far in his second term as president, Donald Trump has remained relatively mute regarding veterans. Of course, actions speak louder than words. Most veterans know that Trump avoided military service by claiming a medical deferment due to his “bone spurs.”

Trump’s second term has featured his slashing of the federal workforce, including his vow to fire 80,000 from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Veterans are disproportionately affected since they make up around 30 percent of the two million civilians who work for the federal government.

Not only was his trimming of the federal workforce unprecedented in scale, but Trump seemed to make it personal by accusing government employees of not working hard. “For somebody to go on the news and say we are incompetent or lazy–that is just false,” Future Zhou, an Army veteran who works at a VA facility in Puget Sound, Washington, told the Associated Press.

According to AP VoteCast, nearly six in 10 veterans voted for Trump in the last presidential election. But more recent polling indicates strong opposition among veterans to many of Trump’s second-term initiatives, especially last summer’s military parade, with 70 percent opposed.

Trump’s McCain Problem

The above graphic memorializes Trump disparaging Sen. John McCain, a naval aviator who spent over five years in a POW camp in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Trump, ever thin-skinned and petulant, took personally McCain’s famous thumbs down to foil a Trump-supported repeal of Obamacare. In the immediate aftermath of John McCain’s 2018 death from brain cancer, Trump lowered the White House flag to half-staff for less than 48 hours instead of waiting to raise it back to full-staff when McCain’s body was interred, as protocol dictated.

Under pressure from veterans groups, the White House returned the flag to half-staff.

Trump’s Veterans Problem

During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump rankled veterans on two notable occasions. At a campaign event in August 2024, Trump suggested that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was “better” than the Medal of Honor, the armed forces’ highest military decoration. Trump seemed to imply that winners of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (which Trump as president controls) rank higher because they’re among the living, and that Medal of Honor winners are “in very bad shape because they’ve hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”

Whatever Trump’s true intentions (crass indifference or “senior moment”), the response from veterans groups was fierce, with Veterans of Foreign Wars commander Al Lipphardt calling his remarks “asinine.”

A ‘Photo Op’ on Sacred Ground

The Medal of Honor remarks may pale in comparison to another sticky situation that also occurred in August 2024. The Trump campaign visited Arlington National Cemetery to observe the deaths of 13 US troops during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan three years before. Trump and campaign officials were intent on staging a photo opportunity in the cemetery’s sacred Section 60, where photography and politicking are strictly prohibited.

An altercation occurred when Trump and campaign staff “abruptly pushed aside” an Arlington official, who was reminding the campaign of the Section 60 rules. Nevertheless, photos of Trump laying a wreath at a gravesite soon appeared on social media. The US Army, which has jurisdiction over Section 60, defended the Arlington official, who later received snide comments from two Trump staffers.

The Trump campaign probably violated federal law.

Trump I: Laying Siege to the VA

To anticipate what veterans have in store for Trump’s second term, we might as well examine what happened in his first. In 2018, the White House released a plan that would ultimately privatize veteran mental health care by outsourcing it to non-VA providers. But with most veteran groups vehemently opposed to privatization and facing dismal poll numbers–only one in three Americans support VA privatization–Trump followed the anti-choice abortion playbook: chip away, chip away, chip away.

Later that year, Congress passed the VA MISSION Act, with assurances that the new law was about “options,” not privatization. Three years later, according to The Hill, “VA services are being rapidly replaced by private sector care, even as studies confirm that non-VA care is generally considered to be of  lower quality and higher costs.”

The bill contained no serious clinical oversight. There was no requirement that care be evidence-based or that providers be accountable for their results. The selection of providers would be left to political appointees or Trump cronies based at Mar-a-Lago (hold that thought).

The Mar-a-Lago Three

Trump’s disrespect for veterans reached a fever pitch in his first term when documents made available by ProPublica revealed that three of Donald Trump’s confidants who frequented Mar-a-Lago were secretly engaged in shaping White House policy towards the VA and the nine million veterans it serves. The three were:

• Ike Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment;
• Bruce Moskowitz, a Palm Beach doctor who specializes in getting wealthy people high-end “consierge” medical care; and
• Marc Sherman, an attorney whose specialty is financial fraud and damage disputes. Of the eight clients listed on his website, none concern healthcare or veterans.

According to ProPublica, the Mar-a-Lago Three were not shy about dispensing their advice. They bombarded VA officials with demands, many of them inapt and unhelpful. On phone calls, Perlmutter, the leader of the Three, would bark at them to move faster, having no patience for collaboration. Then Rep. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the top Democrat of the House Veterans Committee, commented, “The situation reeks of corruption and cronyism…[It is] an unprecedented and disturbing betrayal of our nation’s veterans.”

It was like letting foxes into the henhouse.

Coda: Performative Patriotism

Like many wannabe autocrats, Donald Trump likes to use past or present members of the armed forces as “props” in public appearances. Trump doesn’t seem to “get” the sanctity of public service and the pride it imbues in those who’ve served our country.

A perfect example: During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump was asked to comment on the sacrifice made by Humayun Khan, a soldier who heroically died in Iraq in 2004. Speaking to George Stephanopoulos of ABC, Trump said, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard.”

The Hill: “Trump went on to talk about the buildings and jobs he created, putting his business career on the same level as an officer who died preventing a suicide bomber from killing his men.”

Trump can hug all the American flags he wishes. It will never replace the countless sacrifices made by our country’s veterans, who unlike Trump ask for nothing in return.

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The author is a US Army veteran who served from 1972 to 1975, mostly overseas.