Name: Alleged Trump comments about military in Atlantic article have left Connecticut veterans divided
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Alleged Trump comments about military in Atlantic article have left Connecticut veterans divided

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AdvertisementBy Hartford CourantSep 10, 2020 at 3:57 pmAn explosive published in The Atlantic chronicling how President Donald Trump disparaged military service members has divided Connecticut veterans, as some say Trump’s comments are hurtful but not shocking—while others defend the commander in chief and question the report’s legitimacy.“The war that I participated in was a war that Trump avoided," said Dave Ionno, a retired assistant librarian at the Hartford Public Library and Vietnam veteran, referring to the bone spurs diagnosis that from service in Vietnam. “And to me, that was the first thing that started coloring my attitude toward him. He likes to talk about being a strong person, a patriotic person, and yet he ran away from the war.”AdvertisementThe report, by Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, includes descriptions of moments in recent years in which Trump has scorned service members and veterans or questioned the meaning of their service. In 2018, Trump cancelled visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, asking senior staff members, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” according to the report.Trump has making the comments, calling the story “fake” and insisting that he views American troops as “absolute heroes.” A slew of national news outlets, including the , , The and have confirmed significant portions of the story, which relies largely on anonymous sourcing.AdvertisementThe Atlantic report has divided Connecticut veterans, some of whom, like former Republican Congressman Rob Simmons of Stonington, have pushed back against the assertion that Trump does not support military service members and doubted the legitimacy of Goldberg’s piece."As a retired military officer and a Vietnam veteran, I appreciate what President Trump has done for our veterans,'' said Simmons, who enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1965 and spent 19 months in Vietnam, earning two Bronze Star Medals.Simmons said he questions the comments attributed to the president by anonymous sources and believes they are part of a smear campaign crafted by Democrats in the lead-up to the November election."What I see informs me, not what I hear from anonymous sources,'' he said. “It’s too easy to put a false narrative out there.”Simmons served as an operations officer for the CIA for a decade, an experience that he says taught him to be skeptical of anonymous sources. And as a candidate for Congress in 2000, he was the target of a smear campaign calling him a war criminal. Simmons strongly denied the charge and gained support at the time from U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a decorated Vietnam veteran.Simmons was close to McCain, who died of brain cancer in 2018; their friendship dated to the late 1970s, when both men were Senate staffers. The Arizona Senator made several trips to Connecticut to support Simmons and in 2015, when Trump criticized McCain, Simmons defended his old friend. "I read his books and I admired his service,'' Simmons said of McCain. “He served with honor.”Trump’s hostility toward McCain surfaces in The Atlantic report. Goldberg notes that in 2015, Trump said of McCain, who spent more than five years imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, “He’s not a war hero. I like people who weren’t captured." When McCain died three years later, Goldberg reports that Trump told his senior staff, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral.”Frank J. Mello, Jr., President of the Greater Hartford Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, supported President Donald Trump in the 2016 election because he drawn to the fact that Trump was a businessman and not a politician.Advertisement“Boy, was I wrong,” said Mello. Four years later, he is debating whether to vote for a Democrat for the first time in his life—or not to vote at all.Mello said he had not read Goldberg’s story but has become increasingly concerned with how Trump has treated service members “not very well at all" over the course his presidency.“That was surprising to me,” Mello said. “How can somebody do that? These people risk their lives for the country and a lot of them don’t come back. I mean, I came back, but I lost a leg.”Alex Plitsas led an Army Special Operations Unit in Iraq and later deployed to Afghanistan while working for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. He said he is unsure what to believe about The Atlantic story, given the lack of corroborating witnesses, the anonymity of the sources and the fact that Trump’s remarks were apparently not videotaped.“I don’t know if it’s true or not,” said Plitsas, vice-chairman of the Fairfield Republican Town Committee.Plitsas notes that 20 current and former Trump aides, including Gen. John Kelly, whose son died in Afghanistan, have remained silent on the matter. "If the president had said something that insensitive, [Kelly] is a man of character....he would have said something,'' he said.AdvertisementUltimately, Plitsas said he doubts the Atlantic report will resonate in November.“Folks who don’t like him will continue to not like him," he said. “His base won’t care...I don’t see it having that significant of an impact.”State Rep. Matt Blumenthal (D-Stamford) served as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, with about two and a half years on active duty, including deployment to Afghanistan. He said he was outraged by Trump’s “blunt” comments and what he sees as Trump’s persistent lack of respect for the sacrifice of military service members.“The fact that [Trump] called our wounded veterans and those killed in action 'losers’ and ‘suckers’ makes me deeply angry because of the disrespect it shows,” Blumenthal said. “But it also just reinforces my concern about the fact that he continues to have the authority to order troops into harm’s way, because clearly he does not have the regard for their safety or value for their lives that’s required of a commander in chief.”I can’t believe I have to say this, but not one of us in this photo is a loser or a sucker for having served. — Matt Blumenthal (@MBlumenthalCT)Blumenthal said he was particularly affected by Goldberg’s description of a visit Trump made to Arlington National Cemetery in 2017 with then-secretary of homeland security John Kelly to the gravesite of Kelly’s son Robert, a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, who was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan at age 29. According to the report, Trump turned to Kelly at the gravesite and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”For Ionno, who served in served in Vietnam from 1970 to 1971 as a 19-year-old combat medic, it has been a long struggle to reconcile Trump’s seeming inability to understand why people enlist in the military with his bravado about America’s military strength. While some veterans may not feel comfortable criticizing the commander in chief, Ionno believes that many can no longer stomach the indifference Trump has shown toward veterans and military families.Advertisement“[Trump] doesn’t know what it feels like to be in the military, he doesn’t know what it feels like to put his life on the line, to watch other veterans die," he said."I was a medic, so I had a lot of guys under my hands whose last breath went out under me. It was a loss that I still feel deeply to this day.”Courant staff writer Daniela Altimari contributed to this report.Eliza Fawcett can be reached at elfawcett@courant.com. Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Hartford CourantSep 10, 2020 at 3:57 pmAn explosive published in The Atlantic chronicling how President Donald Trump disparaged military service members has divided Connecticut veterans, as some say Trump’s comments are hurtful but not shocking—while others defend the commander in chief and question the report’s legitimacy.“The war that I participated in was a war that Trump avoided," said Dave Ionno, a retired assistant librarian at the Hartford Public Library and Vietnam veteran, referring to the bone spurs diagnosis that from service in Vietnam. “And to me, that was the...

Alleged Trump comments about military in Atlantic article have left Connecticut veterans divided

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