Kamala Harris has been widely praised for bringing joy back to our politics. But I’d also give some credit to the felon. It has been downright joyful, these last few weeks, watching him suffer the biggest meltdown since the Wicked Witch of the West took that bucket of water in the face.
Veep wannabe J. D. Vance has been working really hard to smear Tim Walz’s 24-year career in the National Guard…and then along comes Captain Bone Spurs to mess everything up by insulting every military veteran in America. The old lunatic’s self-destruction is a joy to behold.
A few nights ago, Trump lavishly lauded Miriam Adelson, a MAGA megadonor who has long gifted him piles of money. He has thanked her in the past; six years ago, during his failed presidency, he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. On Thursday night, he said this:
“When we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom, that’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. But civilian version – it’s actually much better, because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman.”
Wow. It takes a special kind of idiot to piss off the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The venerable VFW does not have a track record of attacking Republican presidential candidates, but this time it has made a striking exception:
“These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterized the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty. When a candidate to serve as our military’s commander-in-chief so brazenly dismisses the valor and reverence symbolized by the Medal of Honor and those who have earned it, I must question whethjer (he) would discharge (his) responsibilities to the men and women with the seriousness and discernment necessary for such a powerful position. (Trump) should frankly already know better.”
Breaking news: He doesn’t know better. Dead soldiers give him nothing; a casino mogul’s widow gives him money. It’s as simple as that.
What have dead soldiers ever done for him? They’re “suckers” and “losers” – his words, as confirmed by John Kelly, his chief of staff. Visiting their graves does nothing for him either. In 2018 he was slated to visit an American military cemetery near Paris, but he changed his mind because, as The Atlantic later reported, “he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day.” Also that year, when ex-POW John McCain died and flags were flown at half staff, Trump raged to his aides, “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser.”
But it’s no surprise that Trump would rate a civilian award as “much better” than a military award for sacrifice above and beyond the call of duty. He has long believed that civilian selfishness trumps military selflessness. Lest we forget, he got five deferments (including the fake claim of bone spurs) to keep him out of Vietnam. Back in ’93 he told Howard Stern that dodging sexually transmitted diseases was just like going to war: “Dating is like being in Vietnam. You’re the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam…It was my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
It’s possible that his latest diss of the military will get lost in his cacophony of crazy. Just yesterday, at an ill-attended rally in Pennsylvania, he thought he was in North Carolina, he fumed again about Harris’ Time magazine cover, he said he’s “much better looking” than her, he said (again) that climate change will give us more beachfront property, he said that Tim Walz is requiring tampons in all schoolboys’ bathrooms (there’s no such requirement), he said his proposed tariff on all foreign goods won’t raise consumer prices (the truth is the opposite, Economics 101), he said that Harris “is walking around with her mouth like almost sealed shut,” he said that calling America a failed nation is “a beautiful phrase,” plus lots of other babble that exposed, yet again, his cognitive decline.
But perhaps our military vets – 16 million nationwide – will remember his antipathy to sacrifice and vote accordingly. They’ve slowly cooled to Trump over the years anyway. In 2016, according to exit polls, 61 percent voted for Trump (34 percent for Hillary); in 2020, 54 percent backed Trump (44 percent for Joe). Further erosion this fall could sink him in swing states with sizable vet populations – most notably, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona.
Pennsylvania, arguably the biggest prize, went blue in 2020 by only 80,000 votes. The state has 638,000 vets. Combat vet Matthew Paul McCaffery, a Republican official in Upper Merion, told a newspaper six weeks ago that Trump’s “disparagement of my fellow veterans reveals something so deeply sinister: a complete lack of understanding of duty and sacrifice. And that’s something I can’t get over…Trump does not deserve to lead the strongest, noblest military in the world, and we have to let him know it.” I bet McCaffery is not an outlier.
And I bet that, in the weeks ahead, Captain Bone Spurs will continue to weaponize his mouth and blast his own feet. Just the other day his hapless running mate said: “Semper Fi – to me, what it means is that Marines are always faithful to our country…I really do think that Donald Trump exemplifies that motto.”
How’s that line working out?