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Duckworth says she’ll take ‘wheelchair and my titanium legs’ over Trump’s ‘supposed bone spurs any day’

by Julia Manchester 09/04/20 01:52 PM ET

Army veteran and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) hit President Trump over his reported comments disparaging fallen soldiers on Friday, citing injuries she sustained in the line of duty.

“I take my wheelchair and my titanium legs over Donald Trump’s supposed bone spurs any day,” Duckworth, who lost both her legs while serving in Iraq, said in a call for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign.

Duckworth was referring to Trump’s deferment from the Vietnam War draft due to a bone spurs diagnosis despite an otherwise healthy physical examination.

Her comments on Friday followed an article from The Atlantic, citing a number of unnamed sources, that said the president canceled a trip to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he worried his hair would be disheveled by the rain.

Trump has aggressively denied the report, calling it “fake news” and a “disgrace.”

The publication also reported that Trump asked senior staff during a meeting before the planned visit: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” in addition to referring to U.S. Marines who were killed at Belleau Wood during World War I as “suckers” because they died.

Duckworth said she was not shocked about the report, saying it matches with Trump’s past rhetoric on service members in the past.

“I’m not shocked but I am appalled,” Duckworth said. “Of course he thinks about war selfishly. He thinks about it as a transactional cost.”

“This is a man who spends every day redefining the concept of narcissism. A man who’s met a life of privilege, with everything handed to him on a silver platter,” she said.