Veterans lash out at Donald Trump after he sends Apprentice contestant to meet with them

| 1:25 pm EST December 23, 2016
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Donald Trump is facing significant backlash from veterans groups after a stunt in which he sent a notorious contestant from his former reality show The Apprentice to meet with them instead of sending someone who would have been considered more appropriate. To say that the move didn’t go over well with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is to risk understating the severity of the controversy.

Trump sent Omarosa Manigault, an infamously dishonest and mean spirited contestant from The Apprentice reality television show, to meet with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The group’s founder, Paul Rieckhoff, is already upset that Donald Trump appears to be considering putting Pete Hegseth, a puppet of the conservative influence-buying billionaire Koch Brothers, in charge of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Worse, Trump is refusing to take the group seriously, stiffing them with a meeting with a reality star.

“It is actually insulting,” Rieckhoff told the Los Angeles Times of how the Trump administration is treating veterans groups. “The highest-ranking person the leading veterans services organizations have met with is Omarosa.”

Meanwhile, Trump and his surrogate Newt Gingrich appear to be far more interested in working with a group called Concerned Veterans for America, which does not represent the interest of veterans and is instead a puppet group for the aforementioned Koch Brothers. Meanwhile, real veterans groups are stuck meeting with a reality show star who once said that Trump’s critics will have to bow down to him.