Trump, as politicians tend to do, made a lot of promises while out on the campaign trail. And as politicians also tend to do, he’s failed to deliver on some of them. Tick-tock, Mr. President, you promised us a wall.
During a Fox News interview, he promised to fix the issues afflicting our veterans. He even followed through on a promise to donate 6 million dollars to veterans groups, albeit only after it had publicly come out that he hadn’t. Back in 2015 he tweeted that vets are treated like third-class citizens. Discounting for hyperbole, he was correct. Now, two years later, he’s personally seeing to it that that tweet becomes understatement.
“They’ve never been treated worse than they’re being treated now, that will change,” he said to Fox News. And he’s made good on that: They’re being treated worse now.
Yet according to him, Trump loves our vets. Except for every trans person in the military he tried to ban from serving. Or the women who’ve been sexually assaulted while serving whom he has no sympathy for. As well as ones named John McCain, and by extension any service member who has ever been a prisoner of war, because by his own words he prefers his veterans to not be of the captured variety.
Though he does believes veteran's families should be taken care of. Unless they speak out about how he actually doesn’t. Like when Gold Star father Khizr Khan and Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson did — the latter being part of an ongoing controversy where Trump forgot the name of the man he was giving condolences to.
Nevertheless, he feels we should respect the flag and those who have served to defend it, going as far to stretch out the non-issue for weeks. Until, of course, there’s a shortage of troops and they need to be called back into service. Recently, Trump has signed a new executive order which would allow him to force upwards of 1,000 retired pilots to be pulled out of retirement. Which, given Trump’s history as a draft dodger, is ironic. It’s something John McCain, now liberated to speak freely, has called Trump out on, as Trump got out of serving in the Vietnam war by getting his doctor to claim he had “bone spurs.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to fight in a war you don’t believe in. Plenty of other presidential candidates and politicians have similarly dodged the draft and the attacks on them have felt hollow.
But there’s no draft today, and the veterans who’ve lost their lives for this country did so out of love for it. So when Trump tried to kick disabled veterans off Fifth Avenue because they ruin the atmosphere and then later went on to brag that nobody respects the troops more than he does, it makes the latter seem a tad untrue. Given how his actions don’t align with his words, it becomes clear that to him, veterans are just a theatrical tool. A group he can point to in order to drum up applause. A group he expects the utmost respect from but not vice versa.