To the editor:

Happy Losers’ and Suckers’ Day?

Veterans Day is approaching and people are already thanking me for my service. But for at least one presidential candidate, Veteran’s Day might be better called “Losers” and Suckers Day.” And millions of voters seem to be just fine with that.

Former President and current candidate Donald Trump clearly thinks we vets were losers for serving and risking our lives. There are too many examples to list them all here, but a few will prove the point. Trump is well known for saying in 2015 that the late Sen. John McCain was not a hero because McCain was captured after being shot down over North Vietnam, adding, “I like people who weren’t captured.” Must it not follow that Trump has similarly low regard for the other 590 Americans, mostly fliers, who, like McCain, survived being shot down, captured, and often tortured? Not to mention the 114 Americans who died in captivity in North Vietnamese hell holes? And of course, the roughly 1,200 who remain Missing In Action? None of them got away.

Heroes to some of us, chumps to Trump.

Around Veterans’ Day 2018, President Trump was in France and scheduled to attend a ceremony at the World War I U.S. military’s Aisne-Marne cemetery near Paris. It holds the remains of 1,800 U.S. Marines who died in the famous 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood. According to several witnesses, Trump refused to attend the ceremony when he learned that, rain having made helicopter flight impossible, he would have to be driven two hours and then stand in the rain. Trump did not want to let his hair get wet (really). When aides tried to stress the importance of visiting the final resting place of U.S. war dead, Trump asked why he should visit the graves of men who were “suckers for getting killed.”

In 2019, when Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley invited an Afghan vet amputee to sing “God Bless America” from his wheelchair at Milley’s induction ceremony, Trump was furious. He told Milley never to do it again. “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see the wounded.”

Millions of voters apparently aren’t discouraged from supporting Trump by his disdain for living, wounded and deceased American warriors. There seems to be a pretty good chance that Trump will be reelected. So, by Veterans Day 2024, all vets and active military may well have a commander-in-chief who thinks we veterans, as well as active military, are nothing but losers and suckers.

Do you?

Sincerely,

Phil Newton

USAF, Vietnam, 1967-68

New York and Vermont Army National Guard, 1982-2000

Saranac Lake

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Sources

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1. Wall Street Journal, “Not a Hero,” July 20, 2015

2. Wikipedia, “U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War”

3. J. Edward Moreno, “The Hill,” Sept. 3, 2020

4. Patrick, Reilly, “Donald Trump reportedly disparaged disabled vet who was severely wounded in Afghanistan and sang ‘God Bless America,'” New York Post, Sep. 23, 2023.