Why the "Losers and Suckers" Hit-Piece on Trump Never Made Sense

Four years ago, a story was launched in The Atlantic with a damning accusation against then-President Donald Trump: that he called soldiers “losers” and “suckers.” To this day, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic leaders, and activists still push these accusations.

But the article never made any sense.

The piece starts:

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near Paris, in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

The article gets this totally wrong. Not only did several Trump officials go on the record and state the accusations in the article were false, but there were also military documents that prove the reason why Trump did not go was because of the weather. “We have a USAF weather SNCO at Belleau Wood, and have been in contact with the French as well as Presidential Wx in the rear. Wx will not support today’s mission.”

Former United States National Security Advisor John Bolton—who no longer likes his former boss—confirmed that Trump did not visit the cemetery because of the weather and wrote about the day in his book, The Room Where It Happened.

“If a motorcade were necessary, it could take between ninety and a hundred and twenty minutes each way, along roads that were not exactly freeways, posing an unacceptable risk that we could not get the President out of France quickly enough in case of an emergency. It was a straightforward decision to cancel the visit but very hard for a Marine like Kelly to recommend, having originally been the one to suggest Belleau Wood (an iconic battle in Marine Corps history). Trump agreed, and it was decided that others would drive to the cemetery instead.”

But the absolute most puzzling thing about all this is one of the sources. When The Atlantic first broke this story (and when I initially debunked the article), we only had anonymous and unnamed sources. Now, General John Kelly, who was acting as the White House Chief of Staff, has come out and confirmed the article. So, how is it possible that The Atlantic could create such a fantastical story about Trump’s true motivations in Paris when—according to John Bolton—Kelly was the one who told Trump they should not go to the cemetery?

Bolton told Fox News, “The main issue was whether or not weather conditions permitted the president to go out to the Aisne-Marne cemetery. The people I recall being there were John Kelly, one of his aides, Mike Pompeo, myself, Jamie McCourt our Ambassador to France. We had this discussion. It was mostly John Kelly presenting the logistical reasons why the trip couldn’t take place, and the president assented to the recommendation that he not go. He didn’t protest that he really needed to go. He just sort of took the facts as they were. It’s a very straight weather call.”

Bolton also wrote in his book that he felt bad for Kelly, because Trump blamed him for the media backlash.

“The press turned canceling the cemetery visit into a story that Trump was afraid of the rain and took glee in pointing out that other world leaders traveled around during the day. Of course, none of them were the President of the United States, but the press didn’t understand that the rules for US Presidents are different from the rules for 190 other leaders who don’t command the world’s greatest military forces. Trump blamed Kelly, unfairly marking a possibly decisive moment in ending his White House tenure.”

Jeffrey Goldberg gets such incredibly important details wrong, to paint a narrative about Trump not respecting service members, by tying in he-said-she-said comments with ones certainly made about Senator John McCain, who Trump had a personal beef with. The bias and the agenda behind the article are obvious, but as to the actual data and evidence, it contradicts the political hit job.

Trump stayed mostly silent about the accusations after advisors told him he shouldn’t dignify it with a response. Now, he believes that advice was unwise because people believed the accusation. “Think of it from a practical standpoint. I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery, and I look at them, I say these people are suckers and losers. Now, think of it. Unless you’re a psycho, or a crazy person, or a very stupid person, who would say that anyway? But who would say it to military people? With military? Because as the President of the United States, I would say if I made that statement, if I have generals here—if I have it—I would imagine that most of them would end up in a major fistfight with the president. Okay? And you know what? I would have said it was okay in that one instance. They made up a story. They just…out of thin air.”

Trump does have a point. Even if you don’t like him—even if you think he’s idiotic and childish—it’s difficult to imagine he’d be that idiotic and childish. It sounds fabricated from someone twisted by their own bias, which is the case in Goldberg’s tortured piece. It’s blatantly factually inaccurate.

When President Biden tried to draw on the story and Kelly’s words to attack Trump on the debate stage two months ago, Trump rebutted by noting Kelly was fired, and there was no love lost between them. According to Bolton, there was tension after the media’s backlash in 2018. Who knows what was said, what was misunderstood, and so on?

But if Kelly was Goldberg’s source, how could he allow such a factually inaccurate story to be published? Even if Kelly isn’t Goldberg’s source, why hasn’t Goldberg retracted his story or added the counter-evidence of Bolton’s book or the navy documents that corroborate Trump’s decision not to attend?

In Goldberg’s piece, he says Kelly declined to comment for the story, but the piece reports that while visiting his son’s grave in Arlington, Trump said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” The article says Kelly, “initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force.” Trump has often asked servicemembers why they serve, but not in a disparaging way. He’s curious and inspired by their sacrifice. However, the article states that Kelly later “came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.”

A friend of Kelly's said, “He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself. He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.”

Does Kelly have reason to hate Trump? It sounds like their working relationship didn’t end on a high note and Trump makes comments that can easily be offensive or misunderstood. But after a statement Kelly made to CNN, it’s very clear that he is skewed by his bias.

“A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,’” Kelly said of Trump. “A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Again, why would Kelly be angry at Trump for not visiting the graves in France when Kelly was the one who gave the recommendation not to go?

Oftentimes, when human beings decide they don’t like someone, they look for reasons to validate their decision. There may be plenty of valid reasons that already exist, yet they continue the search. If they are not careful, their entire perception of reality can change to mimic the narrative they’ve created in their mind. The facts appear to be on Trump’s side. Either Kelly is being blatantly dishonest, or he’s horribly deceived by his own biases.

Either way, Goldberg’s article is debunked and should be discredited.