Trump likes military parades.
He reportedly wanted tanks and missiles in his inauguration parade, but the Pentagon nixed the idea because tanks would destroy the streets (see story here).
What he didn’t want was wounded veterans in his big military parade.
“Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade,” Trump told retired Marine Corps general John Kelly, because, “This doesn’t look good for me.”
In case you’ve forgotten, two years later in 2018, during a visit to France, Trump called the heroes buried in American military cemeteries there “suckers and losers,” and wondered “what was in it for them.” He also sniped that John McCain wasn’t a hero, and remarked, “I like people who weren’t captured.”
I met some of those heroes in Vietnam. One time, when I was a patient on a Navy hospital ship, they put me to work running the elevator from the flight deck down to the surgery wards, and I stood by their stretchers after the medics carried them off the medevac choppers. And, of course, the buddies in my unit were being killed and wounded.
I wasn’t captured, but I don’t think he’d like me anyway. I suppose that’s fair, because I don’t like him. He falls short of my standards for character, honesty, ethical behavior, patriotism, and civic responsibility. I don’t understand why 74 million of my fellow Americans were still voting for him in 2020. Maybe I have higher standards than they do.
Related story: Trump wanted military officers like Hitler’s generals, unaware that Hitler’s generals tried to kill him. See story here.
Below: Trump is not in this scene.