LANGUAGE WARNING: Frequent F-bombs about American military personnel. This who you want to be your president?
By Douglas John Imbrogno | EPISODE 10 of the video election series NotesBeforeYouVote.com, shares some outrageous, damning, and often just vile quotes straight from Donald Trump's mouth about what he really thinks of the U.S. military and the men and women who put themselves in harm's way for America, its people, and the world.
And he really, really doesn't like to be seen with wounded soldiers: 'I don't want them. It doesn't look good for me.' Or recall the reason he avoided a cemetery full of WWII soldiers in Europe: 'Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” Frankly, after reading the quotes, it is hard to fathom how anyone in the military or with family or relatives who serve in any branch of the service could wish him to be their Commander-in-Chief. The opening quote by writer Maya Angelou is over-used and over-familiar these days. But in this instance, it is a dead-on bulls-eye:
‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’ ~ MAYA ANGELOU
The quotes in the video come from a pretty shocking article By Jeffrey Goldberg (and at this stage with Trump, it's hard to be shocked, right?) in the Oct. 22, 2024 issue of The Atlantic. The piece is titled: TRUMP: ‘I NEED THE KIND OF GENERALS THAT HITLER HAD': The Republican nominee’s preoccupation with dictators, and his disdain for the American military, is deepening'
For those of you who are text-centric or are image-a-holics, below are the quotes I used in the video, plus a gallery of screen shots worth sharing. I drew the format of the quotes from a helpful Oct. 22 roundup of Goldberg’s piece, titled ‘Donald Trump’s contempt for the military, quote by quote,’ from Kevin Dum’s essential ‘Jabberwocking.com’ political commentary blog (leavened, thank goodness, with shots of his cats). NOTE: I left out Item 3, as it was too long to fit into the tight space of my video presentation.
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KEVIN DRUM: Jeffrey Goldberg has a long piece in the Atlantic today about Donald Trump's enduring contempt for the military. But maybe you're too busy to read the whole thing. So how about just the quotes?
1. About the funeral for a soldier killed at Fort Hood: “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican! Don’t pay it!”
2. About the supposedly shaky loyalty of his top officers: “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”
3. About the Presidential Medal of Freedom: “It's the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor — that’s soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”
4. About military service: “Vietnam would have been a waste of time for me. Only suckers went to Vietnam.”
5. About the dangers of promiscuous sex: “It is a dangerous world out there. It's like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider.”
6. About the George Floyd protests: “The Chinese generals would know what to do.”
7. About his generals after they resisted shooting protesters: “You are all fucking losers!”
8. About his generals again: “My fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals.”
9. About Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”
10. About John McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
11. About lowering the White House flag to half staff after McCain's death: “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser.”
12. About soldiers who volunteered for service in Afghanistan: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
13. About a visit to a WWII cemetery in France: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
14. About wounded veterans appearing in parades: “I don’t want them. It doesn’t look good for me.”
15. About a wounded veteran singing "God Bless America" at the installation ceremony of Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”
CHECK OUT PAST EPISODES of NotesBeforeYouVote:
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