How Is Trump Hating And Disrespecting American Troops This Week?
Still downplaying traumatic brain injuries as 'headaches'? Check.
It’s long been extremely well-established that Donald Trump has only disdain for servicemembers, veterans, and people who die or are injured fighting America’s wars. He thinks they’re suckers and losers, he thinks injured people are gross to look at, and he attacks Gold Star families. He won’t visit military cemeteries because he’s afraid of getting his hair wet, and he has zero human capacity for understanding why a person would sacrifice for something greater than themselves. He stages campaign ads and photo ops on top of troops’ graves.
SO MANY EXAMPLES.
This week, Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper — one of the many former Trump officials who plainly state that Trump is unfit for the presidency, and will not be voting for him — had to correct Trump, who on Tuesday yet again made fun of traumatic brain injuries suffered by American troops when Iran bombed the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq in January 2020, downplaying them as “headaches.”
“Yeah, that’s, that’s obviously not accurate,” [Esper] responded when asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins if the former defense official saw those brain injuries as just “headaches.” […]
Esper said on CNN that “troops defended extraordinarily well, but when we got up the next morning, we had no injuries, traditionally, as you would know, but over time, we came to learn, as troops did self-reporting, and really came to reported some of their symptoms that we had, I think dozens, over 100 cases reported, and several were very serious, traumatic brain injuries.” […]
“And it took some time to discover these again, but eventually over 100 troops reported injuries [and] some of them were very serious,” Esper, who joined CNN as a contributor in February, said.
“I remember visiting a soldier at Walter Reed Hospital, a couple months later and talking about the attack and what he experienced, and so it’s quite a traumatic night,” he added.
It’s quite frankly difficult to understand what kind of pathology, what kind of mental deficiency, would cause a former president to lie about something like that.
Just more evidence that this country has never had a lower life form in public office than this man, and yet another example of how much he detests and looks down on the troops.
Here’s what Trump said Tuesday, the same day as the vice presidential debate:
Trump was asked if he should have been tougher on Iran in 2020, when they launched ballistic missiles on US forces in Iraq, “leaving more than 100 forces injured.”
And he said: “First of all ‘injured.’ What does ‘injured’ mean? ‘Injured’ means, you mean because they had a headache, because the bombs never hit the fort.”
He called traumatic brain injuries suffered by US troops a “headache.”
Later in the clip, he continued to babble about how nobody was tougher on “Iraq” than him, and he berated the reporter for being dishonest, for failing to say none of the “very accurate missiles hit our fort,” and “there was nobody hurt other than the sound was loud.”
So that’s Trump denigrating troops’ injuries and reducing it to them complaining because they heard a big boom. He’s been lying about it pretty much since it happened.
Bradley Moss tweeted what the injuries actually were:
“Traumatic brain injury.” “Frank loss of consciousness.” “Alteration of consciousness.” “Post-traumatic amnesia.” Troops had to be evacuated to Germany for treatment. Almost 80 of them received Purple Hearts for it.
That’s what Trump is lying and calling “headaches.”
During the vice presidential debate that night, Gov. Tim Walz noted how Trump lies about this, and has always reduced these injuries suffered by these troops as “headaches.” He wasn’t speaking about Trump’s specific comments that day. It’s just that Donald Trump is such a pathological liar that he just so conveniently happened to repeat that lie on the same day as the vice presidential debate.
The Harris/Walz campaign replied to this latest Trump smear on servicemembers:
"As U.S. troops are in the Middle East supporting Israel in the face of Iran's attacks, Donald Trump is insulting injured service members. He is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief,” Harris-Walz 2024 National Security Spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement.
The end.
[The Hill / MeidasTouch / video via Aaron Rupar]
Evan has a new side project called The Moral High Ground, you should check it out and subscribe there too!
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
@evanjosephhurst on Threads!
If you're shopping on Amazon anyway, this portal gives us a small commission.
*cracks neck*
My mother, who, if she had happened to be raised Catholic would be eligible for sainthood, spent the last decade of her career as a scientist doing neuroscience research with a goal of using stem cells to repair TBIs and spinal cord injuries such as those inflicted by car crashes or combat injuries.
If you were issued a speeding ticket in New York State after 2007, a portion of the fine for your irresponsible driving paid for her lab’s work. This is a big deal with serious connections.
The above is to establish my bona fines as someone fully qualified to eruditely point out exactly how wrong and full of shit this fantasy-world cocksucker is.
I hoped against hope in 2016 that the awful things he just tosses off as asides would be disqualifying. I was wrong. If anything, it goes to show how sick MAGA and toxic masculinity are that lies and abuse like this only made his base love him more. These people are irredeemable.
I'm slowly reading through Jack Smith's document. My reaction: Fuuuuuuuck. This is better than I had been hoping for.