President Donald Trump insulted and dismissed the parents of a Muslim soldier who died fighting for this country. He dismissed John McCain’s heroism in Vietnam.
Trump used a veterans event as a foil to avoid a debate in January of 2016 which he was too scared to attend for fear of tough questions, then for months afterwards held out on donating the $1 million of his personal fortune he had promised them until he was forced to do so by media pressure.
And despite bragging about his attendance as a teen (for disciplinary reasons) at the New York Military Academy, he chickened out of Vietnam, receiving four educational deferments, then a fifth and final one for medical reasons – supposedly “heel spurs,” though Trump himself later couldn’t recall if it was for one heel or both.
{mosads}And now he’s thrown our transgendered soldiers and veterans under the bus — likely in order to change the subject from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s interviews of his son and his former campaign manager about the Trump campaign’s Russia connections, and to distract from the abject failure and humiliation that his administration has been thus far.
In fairness, Donald Trump has visited with soldiers at the VA and pushed for more accountability there. Some may take that to mean that he is a strong supporter of veterans and of soldiers in general.
But they’d be mistaken. Donald Trump is a supporter of Donald Trump, and if it will help him to support veterans, he may do so; but if he has to thrown thousands of them under the bus, like he did on Wednesday, in order to distract from his own failures, he will do that as well, and without hesitation.
Trump likes to talk about making America “great again,” but he’s never shown any inclination to work hard for anything that doesn’t benefit him personally. Trump will charm and cajole if it benefits him and he feels he can get away with it.
This has been Trump’s attitude since he was a child. In Gwenda Blair’s “The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate,” a childhood classmate, Fina Farhi Geiger, recalled that Trump and childhood friend Peter Brandt “were extremely competitive and had to be on top whichever way they could. They really pushed the limits in terms of authority and what they could get away with.”
At a summer camp that Trump attended, one of the owner’s sons remembered him well: “He was an ornery kid,” he later said of Trump, “the kind that tried to get out of activities whenever he could. He figured out all the angles.”
And he’s continued to do so, whether it’s been through the misuse of eminent domain or malicious lawsuits or starting a fake university or stoking white anger.
Whatever Trump’s had to do to push himself ahead — even if it means stepping on others — he’s done. Trump’s done it with workers; he’s done it with business partners; he’s even done it to his own attorney general. And now he’s doing it to our transgender soldiers and veterans — the very people who fight to “make America great.”
For all of you out there who think that this man stands for you, I ask you: At what point do you become concerned that he stands more for himself?
Will his efforts to take healthcare away from many millions in order to ensure tax breaks for wealthy people like himself and secure a “victory” do it for you?
Will his attacks on our soldiers do it? Or will nothing?
Will nothing at all convince you to finally say of your man, like Joseph Welch said to McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Ross Rosenfeld is a political pundit who has written for Newsday, the New York Daily News, Charles Scribner’s, MacMillan, Newsweek.com and Primedia.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.