Politics
Trump speaks on behalf of fallen U.S. troops in brazenly self-serving display
When it comes to U.S. service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice during the Iran war, Donald Trump has struggled to know what to say — and how to say it.
In early March, for example, the day after he launched combat operations, the president posted a prerecorded video to social media in which he tried to comment on the deaths of U.S. troops. “Sadly, there will likely be more,” Trump said. Appearing to break from the text on his teleprompter, he added“Before it ends, that’s the way it is.”
A few days later, Time magazine asked the president whether Americans should be worried about possible retaliatory attacks from Iran. “I guess,” Trump replied. By the end of the first week of the war, the president had attended the dignified transfer of six fallen U.S. service members as they were returned home, but he defied American tradition and wore a baseball cap as caskets were carried from the plane.
The image that came into focus was a leader who appeared to be approaching his responsibilities with an unmistakable mix of disrespect and a blasé attitude about developments that he should have taken with a sobriety that he just couldn’t muster.
This week, as the U.S. death toll reached 18, the Republican appeared to use his social media platform to suggest that the total number of fatalities wasn’t that bad because other modern wars were even deadlier. On Wednesday morning, he again traveled to Dover Air Force Base to attend another dignified transfer (he didn’t wear a hat this time), but before departing for the event, the president spent a couple of minutes speaking to the press.
“We’re going to Dover … to honor our heroes, and they are indeed great heroes, actually,” Trump said. Referring to the troops who were killed, he added, “They said, and all of them said very strongly, ‘We can’t let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’”
There’s obviously nothing wrong with honoring fallen troops, and if the president wanted to say that their sacrifice was not in vain, it wouldn’t have been controversial in the slightest.
But Trump went far further, claiming that the soldiers who were killed abroad had somehow expressed personal support for the war he launched and endorsed his dubious rationale for the conflict.
As a piece in The New Republic summarized“For Trump to claim that soldiers who are no longer alive were in full agreement with his war is astounding and insulting to their memories. Trump has no idea how the fallen soldiers felt about the war or if they agreed with it, and the opinions of U.S. troops are as diverse as those of any other group of Americans. The soldiers honored in Dover Wednesday were simply doing their duty and following orders.”
A New York Times report added that Trump “did not say how he knew the fallen soldiers’ views, but he decided to speak for them at a perilous political moment.”
It’s a simple rule: Presidents shouldn’t put words in the mouths of fallen soldiers, especially ones they did not know. It’s common sense and common decency that Trump continues to lack.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”