(A friend of mine, Julie McDonald, writes a column for my local paper, The Chronicle. On September 6th her column criticized President Trump for calling members of the military losers. The President has vehemently denied making the comment and I believe him. After talking with Julie, I wrote this as a rebuttal to her column. The Chronicle chose not to print it.)

Military veterans and those who died deserve respect. That was the headline of Julie McDonald’s column on September 6th. I believe and support those words and expected to agree with Julie as I read her column. My expectations changed quickly.

Julie writes that according to an article in The Atlantic magazine President Trump referred to Marines who perished during the battle of Belleau Wood as losers. What she fails to include in her column is that the article was anonymous and that the owner of the magazine, Laurene Powell Jobs, has donated over $600,000 to the Biden campaign.

There is more reason to doubt the truthfulness of the magazine article. John Bolton was in the room at the time the president allegedly uttered the comment. Since that day, Bolton has lost his position with the Trump administration and written a tell-all book of his time working with the president. However, he states, “According to what that article said, the president made disparaging remarks about soldiers and people buried in the cemetery … that was simply false.” John Roberts of Fox News states that Bolton has said, “If he had heard the president make the remarks, he would have devoted an entire chapter of his book to them.”

Julie McDonald states the Associated Press corroborated the account. Here is the significant paragraph in their report. “The allegations were first reported in The Atlantic. A senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of events and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer who was told about Trump’s comments confirmed some of the remarks to the Associated Press, including the 2018 cemetery comments.” Notice that the AP corroboration refers back to the anonymous Atlantic article. Furthermore, no source is named in the AP article. What we have here is an anonymous corroboration of the anonymous Atlantic article.

Julie McDonald cites President Trump calling John McCain a loser in 2015 and this is true. The two certainly didn’t like each other, but this “loser” comment was in reference to his loss of the presidential election. Here is the Trump quote, “And I supported him for president! I raised a million dollars for him. That's a lot of money! I supported him. He lost. He let us down. But he lost. So I never liked him much after that, because I don't like losers.”

President Trump has shown his support of the military by signing legislation such as the Veteran Treatment Court Coordination Act of 2019, and the Ryan Kules and Paul Benne Specially Adaptive Housing Act of 2019, and has expanded veteran rights and options by signing the Mission Act of 2018, giving the Veterans Administration an additional 5.2 billion dollars to, “ensure every veteran has the choice to seek care at the VA or at a private service provider of their own choice.”

More than talk, these make real improvements in the lives of military veterans. Beyond those actions, Trump has worked to bring the troops home from endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and, Syria. Saving the lives of service people shows true respect. That is why this retired navy veteran will vote to reelect President Trump.

Trump and the Military