Trump Demands Biden Remove Ad of Him Calling Dead Soldiers ‘Suckers’ and ‘Losers’ - The former president said only a “psycho” or a “very stupid person” would’ve made such statements.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    5 months ago

    In fairness to Trump (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write…)

    ““He said I stood over graves of soldiers and I said: ‘These people are suckers and losers,”

    That’s technically correct. He did not say those things in public.

    Edit I watched the ad, it does not specify that Trump said these things in public, just that he said them which is true.

    He said them privately to staff members.

    Confirmed by Trump’s former Chief of Staff, John Kelly:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/john-kelly-confirms-trump-privately-disparaged-us-service-members-vete-rcna118543

    But my favorite quote out of all this is the one that barely gets mentioned:

    https://www.axios.com/2023/10/02/trump-troops-fallen-soldiers-john-kelly

    Trump saying at a 2017 Memorial Day event in Arlington National Cemetery: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

    Trump is ENTIRELY transactional. The idea that good men would fight a war for their country purely because it’s the right thing to do escapes him entirely.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Trump is ENTIRELY transactional. The idea that good men would fight a war for their country purely because it’s the right thing to do escapes him entirely.

      In fairness, you only need a bunch of good men to fight a war purely because it’s the right thing in order to counter the bad men fighting a war in order to do a bad thing.

      Maybe if Trump’s attitude had been more common in Berlin in the 1930s, or more common in the US during the 1960s or in Israel or Russia during the 2020s, we’d have skipped a few nightmarish atrocities without having a bunch of good men perish in the process.

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You are cherry-picking and going off rails.

        But to humor you, how far back do you want to go?

        Because the U.S. was founded on atrocities committed against the people who already lived in North America.

        And the U.S. funded operations to topple legitimate governments in Central America, a time in which a lot of good people died because of it.

        So, don’t paint the U.S. as “the good guys who should listen to Trump.”

        But again, this is entirely a red-herring.

        The truth of the matter is, Trump is a piece of shit who doesn’t respect the people who sacrifice their lives for his safety.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          So, don’t paint the U.S. as “the good guys who should listen to Trump.”

          There are plenty of good people in the US who have resisted the Trumpian brand of ethnic nationalism and the capitalist death drive. And quite a few of them died for their country (or, at least, their friends and family and neighbors). But they’re not the ones we celebrate on Memorial Day. Not officially, anyway.

          The truth of the matter is, Trump is a piece of shit who doesn’t respect the people who sacrifice their lives for his safety.

          Trump was never in any danger. His father was a fascist who idolized the Italian and German dictators running roughshod over Europe. If they’d somehow managed to marshal enough fossil fuel and methamphetamine to do a reverse D-Day and put Axis soldiers onto the Atlantic seaboard, the Trump family would have been the first in line to great them as liberators.

          Why on earth would he be celebrating the Roosevelt Democrats and Eugene Debbs Socialists who were out firing on his ideological allies and business buddies on the other side of the Atlantic?

          Trump wasn’t going to pay homage to the allies of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. You think he wants to bend the knee for a bunch of tankies?

          • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            “You can never criticize bad things because good things exist, too!” ☺️

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      “What was in it for them?”

      Sounds like a perfectly reasonable question to me… far more reasonable than simply assuming the people who perpetrated the US’s colonialist mass-murder campaigns in the third world was simply “good men” (supposedly) “doing the right thing.”

      Good job making Trump sound more rational than you, hero.

      • CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        This take just baffles me… you can disapprove of a war, and still respect people willing to put their life on the line for something they believe is right. Even in war, opposing sides have a long history of showing their enemy a certain amount of personal respect, even though they clearly disagree about something to the point of killing each other over it.

        Your take is just condescending and unempathetic. You can respect someone for sacrificing themselves without agreeing with them about what they’re sacrificing themselves for. Regardless, it shouldn’t be hard to see how someone fighting to depose an infamously brutal dictator (Iraq) or a fundamentalist regime that stones women for wanting a divorce (Afghanistan) can believe that they are doing something good.

          • SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            After reviewing their comment history, I think Masquenox has strong controversial opinions and a bellicose attitude, but is not a troll.

            • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              After reviewing their modlog history, I think Masquenox displays a level of emotional incontinence that is effectively the same as trolling.

              • SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                lol putting that up on the shelf with ‘verbal incontinence’, I like it.

                I do set a line between ‘cantankerous’ and ‘troll’ more leniently along the annoyance scale than others. I say let the dork be a dork, not everyone has social skills.

                • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  I do see what you mean. I think when a dork engages in repeated personal attacks they cross the line for me regardless of their intent.

                  It’s a philosophical question akin to Baudrillard’s “simulate a robbery” idea.

  • NutWrench@lemmynsfw.com
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    5 months ago

    Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. 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.” 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.

    source, The Atlantic, September 3rd 2020

    • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      This is pretty much how narcissists think in a nutshell. It’s essentially a mental disability that makes them incapable of understanding why they would care about people, especially people who can’t adore or praise them (i.e. dead people). Emotional one-way street.