May 2, 2024; Washington, D.C.: Secretary Pete Buttigieg testifies at the Senate Appropriations – Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Photo: Jack Gruber-USA TODAY
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has slammed former President Donald Trump for allegedly disrespecting military service and veterans. Buttigieg, who served as a Navy Reserve officer in Afghanistan, criticized Trump while speaking at a re-election event for President Joe Biden at a Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter in St. Paul, Minnesota last Friday.
“Donald Trump claimed to be incapacitated by bone spurs so that he would not have to serve [in Vietnam] and let somebody go to war in his place,” Buttigieg said. “And that spirit continued through his presidency.”
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“We saw it in the report that he referred to those who gave their lives for this country as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’” Buttigieg continued, adding, “By the way, a report that did not originate from some democratic opposition research machine, it originated from his own chief of staff, somebody who couldn’t be bothered to attend a ceremony at Normandy because it was raining.”
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Buttigieg’s comments referenced several different incidents.
Trump received five deferments from the draft for military service during the Vietnam War, according to USA Today. He received four education deferments while in college. During that time, he played football, baseball, squash, tennis, and golf.
After graduating, Trump got a fifth deferment in 1968. A doctor granted him a medical exemption due to “bone spurs” in his feet. In 2018, two daughters of a New York podiatrist said that their father diagnosed Trump with the condition as a favor to Trump’s father, who was their dad’s landlord. However, the women offered no proof for their claim.
In 2019, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen told a congressional House Oversight Committee, “When I asked [Trump] for medical records [related to his bone spurs], he gave me none and said there was no surgery… He finished the conversation with the following comment: ‘You think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam.’”
An estimated 58,000 young Americans died in Vietnam along with three million Vietnamese people, during the 20-year Cold War conflict, which lasted from 1955 to 1975.
Buttigieg’s comments about Trump calling dead military veterans “suckers” and “losers” originated from a 2020 report from The Atlantic. The publication wrote that Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 “because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead.” The Atlantic cited four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion.
On the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump reportedly told senior members of his staff, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” During the same trip, Trump allegedly referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed, The Atlantic wrote.
While Trump and his allies have long denied The Atlantic‘s report, Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly said it was true.
During his speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, Buttigieg noted that Biden helped secure healthcare for service members who were exposed to toxic burn pits of military waste through the PACT Act. Comparatively, Buttigieg noted that Project 2025, a right-wing agenda outlining policy goals for Trump’s second term, includes cuts to veterans’ healthcare.
“So much depends on the trust that America places in its president to do the right thing for servicemembers and for veterans — and Joe Biden has done that,” Buttigieg said.
