Trump's Long History of Disparaging Military Service

No person this dismissive of the “freemen [who] stand between their lov'd home and the war's desolation” deserves the honor of leading the “land of the free and the home of the brave."

Andrew Harnik/AP. Used under fair use to report and analyze news of civic interest and concern to the American public.

Welcome to Self-Evident! Hopefully, you’re gearing up for the three-day President’s Day weekend.

Folks who’ve been reading my stuff for a while know that I’m quite proud of my family’s history of military service. I’m third generation US Army. I’ve served in the Middle East. My father is a National Guard retiree, serving during the Cold War era. And my grandfather served in World War II. I have a great-great-grandfather who served in the Navy in World War II. I have multiple ancestors who served in World War I. I have at least one ancestor we’re aware of who served in the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican-American War. And just a few years ago, I found the call-out documents for ancestors who fought the British at Lexington and Concord.

I am fully committed to the notion that there is no higher form of patriotism nor greater demonstration of love than to serve your country in the defense of the freedoms and liberties we hold dear.

This is why, in the nearly nine years since Donald Trump first became a major political figure on the right, I’ve grown increasingly frustrated that so many people who think of themselves as patriots, who wave American flags proudly from their properties and their vehicles, and who throw out terms like Make America Great Again and America First all look upon Donald Trump as the greatest President America’s ever had and as a selfless American patriot who loves the country and its people like no one “ever before.”

The facts simply don’t play out with this view, and nothing demonstrates this more than Trump’s sheer resentment and dismissiveness toward the high honor of military service.

And so, for this week’s issue of Self-Evident, I felt compelled to do what I can to set the record straight.

Trump's Long History of Disparaging Military Service

Donald Trump loves to portray himself as an ultra-patriot, a man who loves America more than any President who has ever come before him. He went so far as to hug and kiss the American flag at CPAC in 2020:

But many of his supporters might be surprised and shocked to know that the man they revere as the “America First President” has a lifelong history of not only dismissal but disparagement of military service, long considered the pinnacle of American patriotism.

According to George M. White, a retired Army veteran who was Trump’s cadet leader at the New York Military Academy, where Trump attended the equivalent of high school from 1959-1964, Donald Trump was “a heartless, obnoxious son of a bitch.” Michael Hirsh interviewed George White in 2020 for Foreign Policy, reporting, “White said he witnessed up close Trump’s contempt for military service, discipline, and tradition, as well his ungoverned sense of entitlement.” White went on to say, “When I came back from Korea, in 1972, I ran into him in New York City and told him where I’d been, he didn’t give a flying ripshit that I’d been to Korea. He made barfing noises.”

While Trump’s defenders would typically dismiss this reporting as just another “unhinged attack” against him, it stretches believability to deny it doesn’t establish a foundation of a consistently held attitude by the former President when considered with all the other documented instances of Trump disparaging the military.

The two earliest instances occurred while Trump was running for President in 2015 and 2016.

In the first, Trump appeared to disparage the service of prisoners of war when he was asked a question about the military service of John McCain. Trump replied, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” (emphasis added) Trump later asserted that he was simply misunderstood, but in a 1999 interview with Dan Rather, Trump made a similar comment: “Does being captured make you a hero? I don’t know, I’m not sure.” (Later, in 2018, after John McCain passed away, Trump is reported as saying “We're not going to support that loser's funeral,” and further disparaged both him and former President George H.W. Bush for being shot down in combat).

Later in Trump’s campaign, he ended up in a back-and-forth with Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan. Their son, Captain Humayun Khan, had been killed in 2004 during the Iraq War. Khizr, who had been a Reagan supporter in the ‘80s and began carrying pocket constitutions in 2005, began speaking out against Trump’s candidacy due to his dislike of Trump’s “Muslim ban” rhetoric. After accepting an offer to appear at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, Khizr, with his wife beside him, spoke before the convention, holding up a Constitution defiantly and asking Trump if he’d “even read the United States Constitution?”

In response to Khizr’s speech, Trump took aim at his wife, Ghazala. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Trump said, “If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably—maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.” And in another comment to Maureen Dowd, Trump said, “I’d like to hear his wife say something.”

Khizr immediately responded in an interview with ABC News, visibly agitated and saying, “Running for president is not an entitlement to disrespect Gold Star families and [a] Gold Star mother not realizing her pain. Shame on him!” When Ghazala spoke, she said, “I didn't feel anything except the pain….I was in pain. If you were in pain you fight or you don't say anything, I’m not a fighter, I can't fight. So the best thing I do was quiet."

After Donald Trump became President, more and more instances of disrespect, direct criticism, and even resentment toward military service continued to surface.

In 2017, Sgt. La David Johnson lost his life in a firefight in Niger. His widow, Myeshia Johnson, was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos and confided in him that when then-President Trump called her to offer his condolences, “It made me cry cause I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said he couldn’t remember my husband’s name. The only way he remembered my husband's name is because he told me he had my husband’s report in front of him and that’s when he actually said La David. I heard him stumblin' on trying to remember my husband’s name and that’s what hurt me the most, because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country why can’t you remember his name. And that’s what made me upset and cry even more because my husband was an awesome soldier.”

Again in 2017, Donald Trump visited Arlington Cemetary with his then chief of staff John Kelly, including a brief moment spent at the grave of Kelly’s son 1 Lt. Robert Kelly, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. Reportedly, Trump commented to those standing around the grave, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?"

Two of the most prominent and disturbing instances of disrespect came in 2018 when then-President Trump was abroad in France. According to reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for the Atlantic, Trump canceled a planned trip to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris. Reportedly, Trump questioned the cemetery trip, saying, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” He later specifically disparaged 1,800 marines killed at Belleau Wood, calling them “suckers.”

Also, in 2018, Trump is reported to have complained about the planned presence of wounded warriors at a military parade, saying, “Nobody wants to see that.” Retired General Mark Milley told a similar story about a welcome home ceremony for returning soldiers in 2019, where a severely wounded veteran sang “God Bless America.” After the performance, then-President Donald Trump said to Milley, "Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded."

Further controversy over Trump’s reported derogatory comments toward military service arose during his 2020 re-election campaign. With more reports of Trump referring to military service members as “losers,” stories also arose of Trump telling “senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got.” Trump would also question the Generals and former Generals around him on their choice to serve in the military, saying, “You seem like fairly talented guys — why would you do that? You don’t make any money.”

Also in 2020, then-President Trump sparked outrage from the Veterans of Foreign Wars when he minimized the seriousness of traumatic brain injuries suffered by 34 soldiers in an Iranian missile strike. “No, I don’t consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries that I’ve seen,” said Trump, “I heard that they had headaches.” The VFW issued a stinging rebuke: “TBI is a serious injury and one that cannot be taken lightly. TBI is known to cause depression, memory loss, severe headaches, dizziness and fatigue—all injuries that come with both short- and long-term effects. The VFW expects an apology from the president to our service men and women for his misguided remarks.” 

Responding to the various controversies in 2020, retired Colonel Jack Jacobs, a Medal of Honor recipient, offered this observation about then-President Trump: “I’ve spoken to a lot of people who work directly for the President. The President has no respect for people in uniform, no respect for people who have served and, most significantly, does not understand the notion of being part of something that’s larger than yourself.”

Most of what I have cited in this issue of Self-Evident has been dismissed by Trump and his enablers since much of the reporting relies heavily on either second-hand accounts or anonymous sources. But in 2023, John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, went on record with CNN’s Jake Tapper and confirmed the reliability of previous reports. “What can I add that has not already been said?” said Kelly, “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family—for all Gold Star families—on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

John Kelly, in the interview, confirmed nearly all of the reported utterances of Donald Trump disparaging military service and added several more. During a trip to France in 2017, when Trump attended the Bastille Day parade, Kelly recalls Trump telling him he wanted to have a similar parade in America, but, while pointing to former French veterans in wheelchairs, said, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.” Kelly responded, saying, “Those are the heroes. In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are—and they are buried over in Arlington.” But Trump was adamant, “I don’t want them. It doesn’t look good for me.”

The report also includes a statement from Alyssa Farah Griffin, who initially led the pushback to earlier such stories in 2020 while part of the White House staff. She said, “Despite publicly praising the military and claiming to be the most pro-military president, there’s a demonstrable record of Trump bashing the most decorated service members in our country, from Gen. Mattis to Kelly to Milley, to criticizing the wounded or deceased like John McCain. Donald Trump will fundamentally never understand service the way those who have actually served in uniform will, and it’s one of the countless reasons he’s unfit to be commander in chief.”

And thus far this year, it seems Donald Trump plans to continue his long history of diminishing and belittling military service and the sacrifice both of those who serve and their families. As has been well reported, Nikki Haley, Trump’s last remaining challenger in the Republican Primary, said goodbye to her husband Michael last year as he deployed with the South Carolina National Guard to the Horn of Africa. Only military families truly understand the trial of a deployment, the pain of separation, the days, weeks, and sometimes longer without hearing from a deployed loved one. The rising fear and constant reminder of the risks a loved one faces with every news story. But such a sacrifice is not that difficult to at least appreciate. Yet, Trump further demonstrated his lack of boundaries and propriety when he launched a diatribe against Haley and her deployed husband: “Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away. What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone.”

What we have is an undeniable pattern of behavior that not only stretches across the years since Trump first stepped into the political arena in 2015, but extends across his lifetime. Trump has no sense of self-sacrifice or selfless service. He cannot comprehend those who answer a call of duty and embrace a commitment to a higher calling. He is not a man of honor. His professed patriotism rings hollow. He only sees what’s in it for him. He is a purely transactional creature. He thinks he has the world figured out, that at the end of the day, everyone is out for themselves, and he holds contempt and derision for any “sucker” or “loser” who hasn’t figured out what he has.

No person this lacking in reverential attitude for the “freemen [who] stand between their lov'd home and the war's desolation,” who has demonstrated such dismissive contempt for the blood, sweat, and tears that have “preserv’d us a nation” deserves the honor of leading the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

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-Justin Stapley

Justin Stapley received his Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Utah Valley University, with emphases in political philosophy, public law, American history, and constitutional studies. He is the Founding and Executive Director of the Freemen Foundation as well as Editor in Chief of the Freemen News-Letter. @JustinWStapley