So much for Donald Trump giving a damn about the military, the troops or the flag
Donald Trump and his apologists love insisting that any black athlete who protests during the national anthem is “disrespecting the military” and “disrespecting the flag.” This represents a total lack of understanding of what the protests are about, and what the flag actually stands for. In Trump’s case it also represents straight up hypocrisy, as he just spent an entire day finding ways to disrespect the military and the flag.
Trump made the mistake of holding a nationally televised press conference on Monday, which allowed a reporter to ask him why he still hasn’t called the families of the four U.S. soldiers who were killed in action all the way back on October 4th. Trump responded by falsely claiming that President Obama didn’t call the families of fallen soldiers at all. When he was immediately called out for this lie, he backtracked and claimed that he didn’t really know, and that it was just something he heard. Then he blamed his Generals for the situation.
Talk about disrespecting the military. Trump played at least half a dozen rounds of golf during the time that he was too busy to call the families of those soldiers. During that period of time, he also orchestrated the stunt in which Mike Pence walked out of an NFL in protest of the black players who were protesting during the anthem. So now we know that during this phony taxpayer-wasting walkout stunt, Trump was disrespecting the military and disrespecting the flag by refusing to call the families of recently fallen soldiers. Oh, and he lied about the phone calls that a former Commander in Chief made to the families of other fallen soldiers. But the traitor was just getting started.
On Monday evening, when John McCain was being recognized for his military service, President Obama tweeted “I’m grateful to John McCain for his lifetime of service to our country. Congratulations, John, on receiving this year’s Liberty Medal.” Donald Trump instead tweeted a video of himself and made no mention of McCain. After Trump’s day on Monday, he can take his “disrespecting the flag” pet phrase and shove it up his unpatriotic ass.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report