A new report details multiple instances of Donald Trump allegedly making disparaging remarks about members of the US military who have been captured or killed, including referring to the American war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 as “losers” and “suckers”.
The allegations were first reported Thursday in the Atlantic. A senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of events confirmed some of the remarks to the Associated Press, including the 2018 cemetery comments.
The defense official said Trump made the comments as he declined to visit the cemetery outside Paris during a meeting following his presidential daily briefing on the morning of 10 November 2018.
Staffers from the National Security Council and the Secret Service told Trump that rainy weather made helicopter travel to the cemetery risky, but they could drive there. Trump responded by saying he didn’t want to visit the cemetery because it was “filled with losers”, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss it publicly.