Monday, May 26, 2025

How Trump's Rambling West Point Speech Would've Been Received By My Dad (A WW II Army Vet)

 "Trump is a five time draft dodger, his father got a podiatrist who owed him a favor to say little Donnie had “bone spurs”. Trump has said soldiers were suckers and losers, and asked “what was in it for them?” while looking at a vast military graveyard. Any soldier that has taken the oath to support and defend the Constitution should not obey any illegal or unethical orders issued by this immoral lying traitor." - WaPo comment


The recent news (UK Independent) on Trump's West Point speech i.e

Would have made my WW II vet dad puke his guts out.  I can imagine what dad - who fought in the Pacific  (and died in 2009) - would have said on reading that piece:

"What the hell is a damned draft dodger and convicted felon doing giving a speech at a service academy anyway?  How the hell did he even get elected being a damned felon? Praising Capone in the speech? He ought to be impeached just for that!" 

No doubt his ire would especially have reached boiling point after reading in the piece:

 "Last spring, he also made history by becoming the first criminally convicted former president.

I was investigated more than the great late Alphonse Capone,” Trump told the West Point graduates. ... I went through more investigations than Alphonse Capone, and now I'm talking to you as president. Can you believe this?”

No, dad - who died sixteen years earlier- would never have believed Americans  could be so crass, short- sighted, self-serving and foolish to vote a felon into the highest office. No matter what he promised in an election campaign. He fought World War II under FDR's presidency so why would he believe people could descend to such a warped level?

  Dad after coming home in 1945.

                               With New Guinea headhunter before Buna Gona battle

  Unlike Trump, who ran from service using the ruse of "bonespurs",  Dad volunteered as a nineteen-year-old and joined the Army  before Pearl Harbor. He then ended up fighting in the Battle Of Buna - Gona in New Guinea. He lived to relate his war experiences in a diary which I read from time to time.  One image he sketched is shown below :



What's noteworthy is while the so-called "commander-in-chief" is a pathetic whiner and grievance-filled-putz , e.g. from Washington Post:

"The president of the United States claims to be victimized by: Unfair (but unproven) political persecution via elite universities “dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” Throngs of undocumented immigrants “of the worst order.” Court decisions that don’t go his way. Law firms at odds with what he wants to do. Media coverage that undercuts him. Mayors who don’t collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And a Black Lives Matter Plaza created in June 2020 by a then-defiant D.C. Mayor Bowser as a symbolic rebuke of the first Trump White House."

Dad never wallowed in grievance and abject victimhood even after he contracted malaria in the New Guinea jungles.  Nor did PTSD from his war experience make him turn to drink or drugs on his return to the states.  He had a million excuses to become a self-centered  angry a-hole and bum but he didn't.  No, he manned up, sucked it up and worked hard for his family.  Even when down and out, he didn't grift like Trump, he worked harder to get us through hard times.

While Trump - felon and Capone praiser- dissed vets wounded or killed in wars as losers, i.e.


The presidents dad respected most (FDR, JFK) extolled service.  They also honored and respected the constitution, unlike Trump. Of course, Trump would  be calling him a "sucker" or "loser" just for getting malaria. By the way, if dad had been told Trump was planning a military parade - with tanks and choppers and hundreds of marching troops - he'd howl with scorn and disbelief.  

But let’s not forget Trump's new nickname:  TACO — "Trump Always Chickens Out" - a mocking label used by Wall Street investors that this coward always blinks when pushback occurs on his tariffs. The term was created in response to his pattern of announcing steep new tariffs on the United States' trading partners then backing down when opponents (like China – which holds most of our bond debt - stood their ground.

 But I suspect the label applies not only to his tariff policy but also to his foreign policy. What do you expect, as dad would ask, from a draft dodger? 

Today, however, is not time to waste on posturing pretender presidents,  cowardly congress critters and a browbeaten U.S. media. I choose to focus instead on genuine heroes who put country before selves. 


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by Heather Digby Parton | May 29, 2025 - 5:38am | permalink

— from Salon

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Trump spent some time with the people he called suckers and losers of both the future and the past. He delivered the commencement address at West Point, and rambled on for a good hour reprising the trophy wives and yachts story he told the Boy Scouts back in 2017 and boasting about his felonies, saying, "I went through more investigations than Alphonse Capone, and now I'm talking to you as president, can you believe this?" This was his lesson in perseverance to the graduates: no matter how many crimes you commit, you too can become president.

He said he didn't have time to do the traditional handshake of the graduating seniors because he's dealing with important national security issues in Russia and China. Luckily, he is able to do that from the golf course where he was seen later that afternoon.

The next day, he delivered a Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery in which he shared with all the people who were there mourning their loved ones that he was glad that he hadn't won his second term until now because he "got the World Cup and the Olympics." I'm sure that was very comforting.

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by Thom Hartmann | May 28, 2025 - 5:24am | permalink

— from The Hartmann Report

U.S. President Donald Trump opened Memorial Day in the most disgusting way possible, not by praising our fallen heroes but by attacking Democrats. He wrote on his Nazi-infested social media site on Monday morning:

Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds…

When the President of the United States calls members of the oldest political party in the world and a former president “scum,” it’s not just another ugly outburst that embarrasses America before the rest of the world: It’s a warning sign. A bright red flag.

It tells us that something far more sinister than partisan posturing is afoot. Something our media has already decided to overlook in their perpetual effort to normalize the abominable.

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