Yesterday, CNN analyst John Harwood wrote that "From the outset of Donald Trump's presidency, Americans have told pollsters they consider him dishonest. That makes his re-election campaign entirely on-brand. In ways large and small, in targeted advertising and public remarks, Trump has made deceit the hallmark of his bid for a second term... Trailing Biden nationally and in key battleground states, Trump casts doubt on the legitimacy of the election by falsely associating mail-in balloting with rampant fraud. That amplifies what his own Department of Homeland Security calls Russian propaganda.Attorney General William Barr joined him in that effort on CNN this past week by making assertions about fraud that the Justice Department later acknowledged were inaccurate. The president even suggested his North Carolina supporters attempt to vote in person after mailing in absentee ballots, which would be a crime.American voters have noticed. In a July Quinnipiac University survey, 66% called Trump dishonest; 64% told Washington Post/ABC pollsters they didn't trust the president on coronavirus. Last week, a 55% majority told ABC/Ipsos said Trump's comments made disorder in American cities worse, not better. The recent Democratic and Republican conventions gave Americans a back-to-back opportunity to evaluate the unfiltered message of each presidential candidate. A CNN poll before either one showed that, by 51%-40%, voters preferred Biden over Trump for being 'honest and trustworthy.' After the conventions, the numbers changed. Trump's deficit on honesty had grown to 53%-36%."Yesterday, in response to the national furor over Trump's latest exposure as an unpatriotic asshole who loves the military and hates the troops, he attacked Steve Jobs' widow, Laureen Jobs. Why? She's a part owner of The Atlantic, the magazine that started the whole furor for the would-be Führer. His pathetic tweet yesterday:Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote the original exposé, is certainly not intimidated by Trump, generally considered the most despicable con man in American history, calling him a con-man. He was on Reliable Sources yesterday, where he told Brian Stelter that he "would fully expect more reporting to come out about this and more confirmation and new pieces of information in the coming days and weeks. We have a responsibility and we're going to do it regardless of what he says. We're not going to be intimidated by the President of the United States... We're going to do our jobs."Trump and members of his foul regime are running around like chickens without heads denying his disdain for military service. I hope he read the report by Michael Kranish laying out his long history of disparagement. Big shot always derided men and women committed to any kind of public service-- but military service more than any. Years before he was a national figure and just a despised con man in New York, "Trump had bragged on a morning radio show about avoiding the Vietnam draft, remarking that one of the show’s hosts who had gotten out of service by declaring he had a bad knee had done a 'good job.'... Trump had a long track record of incendiary and disparaging remarks about veterans and military service... [H]e didn’t understand why the U.S. government spent so much effort to find missing soldiers who he believed had performed poorly and were caught. Trump told senior advisers that those who served in Vietnam were 'losers' because they didn’t find a way to avoid service."
Trump, who avoided military service by citing a bone spur in his foot, has disparaged veterans who were wounded or captured or went missing in action and even compared his fear of sexually transmitted diseases to the experience of a soldier, saying in 1993, “if you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam. It’s called the dating game.”It is a history filled with contradictions, of a man who denigrates his handpicked generals while saying no one supports the military more than he does, and of a commander in chief who questions the bravery of some soldiers even as he reversed disciplinary action against a Navy SEAL over the objections of Pentagon officials. He was raised in a family that criticized the value of military service, according to niece Mary L. Trump, but nonetheless he was sent to a military academy for most of his teenage years.And now, Trump and his aides are fiercely denying a report in the Atlantic in which the president is quoted denigrating U.S. soldiers, including calling those killed in combat “losers.”...Trump has had a series of fights with the generals he put in power, some of whom left in anger and dismay. In a 2017 meeting at the Pentagon, he called his top generals “losers” and “a bunch of dopes and babies,” according to A Very Stable Genius, by Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig. Among those who have departed include his chief of staff, retired general John F. Kelly, and his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, a McCain favorite.Mattis said earlier this year that “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.” In response, Trump, who had once lavished praise on Mattis, tweeted: “I didn’t like his ‘leadership’ style or much else about him... Glad he is gone!”
