“They have some sleazebag reporter from a third-rate magazine having some source quoting me saying, I won’t even use the term, but saying bad things. … We had 25 people that were witnesses that are on the record already that have said that never took place. It never took place — what they said.”
— President Trump, at a campaign rally in Minden, Nev., Sept. 12
Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic published an article Sept. 3 that was at once both surprising and not surprising: “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers.’” The president had famously attacked the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), saying he wasn’t a war hero, because “I like people who weren’t captured.” But Goldberg provided what he said were new accounts of Trump’s private remarks disparaging soldiers who died in service of the United States.
The people who recounted these remarks were not identified. In trying to refute the article, the White House has focused on its first anecdote — that Trump canceled a visit to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he did not believe it was important to honor American war dead.
“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,’” Goldberg wrote. “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.” Continue reading.