President Donald Trump and his assistants rushed Friday to include reports that he made derogatory comments about U.S. service members and those killed in the U.S. War when Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden went on the offensive in a newly besieged White House.
In statements to the Oval Office, Trump attacked The Atlantic for his version that he called fallen Marines “losers” and “fools,” and sought to calm the developing controversy.
“This is a fake story written through a magazine that will probably no longer exist,” Trump said.”But it was a completely false story, and it was shown through many other people who were there.It was a terrible story”.something that someone can simply say the kind of thing, and especially to me, because I did more for the army than almost anyone else.
Trump’s latest repudiation of The Atlantic’s report came hours after Biden’s most sensitive replacements denounced the president in a call to the press, capturing a possible turning point in a general election crusade that in recent days has left the Democratic nominee reiterating his opposition to violence against racism.protests, injustice and police brutality.
On Friday, however, it was Trump who found himself playing defense, having to aid the military less than two months before an election in which he will rely on a political base of electorate made up of a disproportionately higher percentage of veterans.
“No one considers the military, and especially the other people who gave their lives in the army; to me, they’re heroes.To me, they’re heroes,” Trump said.” It’s even hard to know how they could have done it..”
Biden and his crusade increased temporarily. The former vice president, who planned to deliver a speech on the Delaware economy on Friday afternoon, spent much of the occasion rebuking Trump.
“I’ve never been so disappointed in my entire career with a leader I’ve worked with, president or not,” Biden said.”If the article is true and turns out to be based on what he said, surely it is rebatable It is a disgrace.
The president’s re-election team rushed Thursday night to respond to The Atlantic’s report that Trump had canceled a planned 2018 stopover at the US cemetery in Aisne-Marne near Paris because rainy weather would smoter his hair and the ‘cemetery’ full of losers’.’.»
Trump’s crusade pointed to a redacted White House email saying the sunken cemetery was the result of a “call to bad weather,” while an organization of existing and former management officials who accompanied the president to Paris tweeted his own denials.
White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino called the report an “shameful attempt to defame POTUS,” former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called it “total nonsense,” and Trump Crusade spokeswoman Hogan Gidley said the story was filled with “disgusting.”horrible and reprehensible lies.
Amid the new consequences Friday morning, most sensible administration officials turned to cable news to launch their own defenses against Trump.
“I wasn’t in Paris, but it never happened,” Vice President Mike Pence told CNBC, insisting that “Americans are in those anonymous, last-minute media in the Atlantic or elsewhere.It’s just politics as usual.”
“I’ve never heard the president use the language allegedly said in this article, about how he deals with army bellies and losers,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News.”I’ve never noticed that before. In fact, on the contrary.He had the utmost inner respect.”
Trump’s most sensitive advisers in the West Wing also spoke at a press conference at the White House.National security adviser Robert O’Brien said The Atlantic’s report was a “sad article for any magazine he has published,” and senior adviser Jared Kushner denounced the “anonymous sources” referred to through the media.
“It’s not the way I noticed the president behaving.He has great respect for the military, for our veterans,” Trump’s mother-in-law Kushner told reporters.
“You have to look at his movements, ” he added. And I think their movements have been to support the army, strengthen the army and strengthen our veterans.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany later accused The Atlantic of having “abandoned all journalistic integrity,” accusing the magazine’s “liberal activists” of “not being interested in the fact and Array…to pedal propaganda loaded with conspiracy.”
Perhaps the ultimate vital demonstration of what came here since the Pentagon on Friday afternoon, when Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the president “had the utmost respect and admiration for our country’s military, veterans, and families.”That’s why he fought for better pay and more investment for our armed forces.
In popularity for Trump’s grief in The Atlantic report, he later tweeted that he would cancel a Department of Defense order to prevent publication of the independent Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes.
“The United States of America will NOT cut the investment for the magazine @starsandstripes my watch,” he wrote.”This will remain a glorious source of data for our wonderful army!”
Meanwhile, a slew of Democrats said they were furious, adding Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient, who told reporters at Biden’s crusade that she was “shocked.” per The Atlantic report.
“He’s a guy who spends every day redefining the concept of narcissism.A guy who’s lived a life of privilege, with every single thing he’s been given on a silver platter,” said Duckworth, who lost both legs.when the Blackhawk helicopter she co-piloted shot down through the Iraqi insurgents in 2004.
“Of course he thinks selfishly about war,” he says.”He sees this as a transactional charge that human lives and American bloodshed, because that’s how he notices it all his life.He does not perceive the courage and courage of others because he has never had one”.
The Atlantic narrative was then corroborated in component through media such as the Associated Press and Washington Post, which reported other explosive allegations about the national army president’s belief.
For example, Trump ran out of words about why the U.S. government valued the search for infantrymen who lacked a fight because he believed they “got along badly and got stuck and deserved what they were given,” according to the Post.
Duckworth focused on another detail of The Atlantic’s report: the president’s request at a White House planning assembly in 2018 for an army parade that the occasion for celebration does come with veterans injured as amputees.”No one needs to see that,” Trump reportedly said.
Duckworth insisted that Trump’s statements “diminish the sacrifices of wounded infantrymen who have left their members, as I have, by all Americans, by adding him.”
“I would take my titanium wheelchair and legs on the bone spurs predicted by Donald Trump any day,” he said, referring to the medical exemption that gave Trump a pardon from being enlisted in the military during the Vietnam War.
Khizr Khan, the father of the golden star whose son died in Iraq in 2004 and who has been arguing with Trump since his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, also about Biden’s call to the crusade.president’s maximum forceful and private condemnation to date.
“Words matter. The words we say are a window into our souls, about how we see the world and our position within it,” Khan said.”When Donald Trump calls on those who put their lives at the service of others as a ” loser, “We perceive Trump’s soul.”
Khan went on to describe Trump’s life as a “testimony to selfishness”, saying that the president “incapable of perceiving service, bravery and courage.” Your soul cannot conceive of integrity and honor. And let me say very loudly and obviously that America can hear: its soul is that of a coward.
Pennsylvania rep. Conor Lamb, a Navy veteran and Biden’s last replacement to participate in Friday’s press call, was more reluctant to talk about Trump’s comments, rather than explaining the ancient and symbolic importance of the Battle of Belleau Wood to the US Marine Corps.But it’s not the first time
Many Marines killed in this war are buried in the American cemetery in Aisne-Marne, which Trump refused to visit, and the three-week World War I showdown is widely “if not the maximum, indeed one of the maximum life wars.”Marine Corps, ” according to Lamb.
“This war and this cemetery deserve the utmost respect and veneration of any American,” Lamb said, however, “that a president passes up the opportunity to pay this site, it is just a tragedy, no matter what is said or no”. Do not tell.
Several of Lamb’s Democratic space colleagues who also served in the military also criticized Trump at a conference call with reporters on Friday.The organization of legislators included representatives Gil Cisneros and Ted Lieu of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Elaine Luria of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey.
“I am incredibly proud to serve our country.I didn’t do it because I’m stupid or stupid.I did it because I love this country,” Sherrill said, adding, “I don’t think it has the compatibility to be president of the United States.”States.”
Matthew Choi contributed to this report.