Biden ad bashes Trump over alleged comments about US service members

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign released an ad Friday blasting President Trump over alleged comments he made in 2018 about dead U.S. service members before his canceled trip to Belleau, France.

“Mr. President, if you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them,” Biden posted in a tweet Friday along with the ad that highlights Trump’s alleged comments.

Mr. President, if you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them. pic.twitter.com/hcX9hGgdm5

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 4, 2020

The ad comes one day after The Atlantic published a report citing several sources Thursday alleging Trump canceled his trip to a cemetery just outside Paris in 2018 over concerns inclement weather would dishevel his hair.

At the time, the president said that they could not make it to the cemetery because a helicopter could not make it in the rain, and the U.S. Secret Service would not let him motorcade to the location. 

The sources also told the magazine that the president had called American soldiers buried there “losers” and “suckers,” because they died during the First World War. 

Biden’s new campaign ad shows text of the quotes from the Atlantic’s report stating, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers” as images of service members and white crosses from the cemetery at Normandy, France, fill the background. 

The Biden ad also included comments Trump made about the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whom the president called a “loser.”

The Atlantic reported that when McCain died in 2018, Trump allegedly told a senior staff, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral.” The magazine reported that he was also angry when flags at the White House were lowered to half staff.

At the 2015 Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump mocked McCain, who was captured and tortured by North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War, saying he preferred people who “weren’t captured” and aren’t “losers.”

On Friday, Biden held a news conference blasting the president over his reported comments on the military.

“If what is written in The Atlantic is true, it’s disgusting and affirms what most of us believe to be true: That Donald Trump is not fit to do the job of president and be commander in chief,” Biden said.

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton on Friday said in an interview that he didn’t hear the comments that Trump made at the time. Though he added, “I’m not saying he didn’t say them later in the day or another time, but I was there for that discussion.”