Chatting with reporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Trump was requested in regards to the assault within the context of the current missile assault on Israel by Iran.
Reporter: Do you consider that it is best to have been more durable on Iran after that they had launched ballistic missiles in 2020, on U.S. forces in Iraq, leaving greater than 100 U.S. troopers injured?
Donald Trump: So, to begin with injured, what does injured imply? Injured means you imply as a result of that they had a headache, as a result of the bombs by no means hit the fort? … And should you had been a really truthful reporter, which you’re not, you’ll inform the next: None of these very correct missiles hit our fort. All of them hit outdoors and there was no one harm, aside from the sound—it was loud, and a few individuals stated that harm and I settle for that.
That is false. In line with the Pentagon, a minimum of 109 troops had been recognized with traumatic mind accidents after the assault on the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq in January 2020. In accordance to the Mayo Clinic, traumatic mind accidents can have an effect on mind cells and may also lead to bodily harm to the mind, resulting in dying or long-term medical issues.
In 2021, the Military accredited awarding Purple Hearts to most of the troops affected by the assault.
Trump additionally minimized the assault in 2020, when he was president. After the incident first occurred, Trump claimed, “No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime.” Just a few days later he stated, “I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things.”
His rhetoric sparked condemnation from the group Veterans of International Wars , who stated in a assertion, “The VFW expects an apology from the president to our service men and women for his misguided remarks.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, then serving as a U.S. senator, wrote, “The invisible wounds of war like a traumatic brain injury are serious—and Trump saying otherwise is absolutely despicable.”
Trump has been concerned in a number of incidents the place he has disparaged members of the army and army service. In August, he staged a marketing campaign photograph op at Arlington Nationwide Cemetery in an space the place it’s forbidden, and members of his marketing campaign grew to become concerned in a verbal and bodily altercation with cemetery workers because of this.
That month, Trump stated that the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is awarded to civilians, is “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor given to members of the army.
“It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor—that’s soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Trump stated. Trump as soon as awarded the presidential medal to infamous bigot Rush Limbaugh.
When he first ran for president in 2015, Trump responded to criticism from the late Sen. John McCain by remarking, “I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain was held as a prisoner of warfare for 5 and a half years in Vietnam, from 1967 to 1973, and was tortured throughout that point.
Throughout that marketing campaign Trump additionally heaped criticism on the mother and father of Captain Humayun Khan, an American Military officer who was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq. Khizr Khan, the fallen soldier’s father, spoke on the 2016 Democratic Nationwide Conference, criticizing Trump for the Muslim ban and emphasizing the types of faiths and ethnicities that serve within the U.S. army.
A number of sources additionally advised The Atlantic in 2020 that Trump referred to Individuals who died in army service as “suckers” and “losers,” an account which was later verified by John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of workers within the White Home.
