Trump fails to right a wrong with nation’s veterans
It would have been so easy.
Yes, it would have been so easy for Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, to do the right thing during his 20-minute speech at the recent Rolling Thunder motorcycle run in Washington, D.C.
Given that the event is dedicated to remembering prisoners of war and service members missing in action — it’s largely supported by Vietnam veterans — you would have thought Trump would have at least acknowledged that Rolling Thunder’s central goal is honorable.
But Trump never once mentioned our nation’s prisoners of war, or those missing in action overseas.
I watched as former Congressman John LeBoutillier, R-N.Y., slammed Trump on Fox News for going to an event aimed at bringing awareness to POW-MIA soldiers, and not mentioning the issue once.
“I can tell you when he left, there was disappointment today that he hadn’t mentioned why these guys and gals today came from all over America,” LeBoutillier said. “There were 300,000 people here for one issue, and he never mentioned it.”
Joe North, a Las Vegan who served in the Marines and escaped from an enemy prison camp in Vietnam, wasn’t pleased by Trump’s oversight.
“It shows,” he said, “that he’s kinda brain dead.”
Why wouldn’t Trump honor the POWs and MIAs?
After all, without apologizing he’s tried to walk back comments he made last year about “loser” U.S. Sen. John McCain, a former POW: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK.”
As veterans’ groups criticized him, Trump changed his tune: “If a person’s captured, they’re a hero.”
If Trump really meant that, there was no better time to expand on his position than at the Rolling Thunder event. Like many Vietnam veterans, I believed his angry personal battles with McCain — the senator had drawn Trump’s ire when he called many of the billionaire’s supporters “crazies” — may have gotten in the way of coherent thought.
I expected Trump to talk at the rally about one of his purported heroes, President Ronald Reagan, who in the 1980s signed into law legislation providing for a Prisoner of War Medal.
At a 1988 presentation of the POW medal to Americans representing World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam War, Reagan spoke of his respect for POWs and MIAs:
“You survived the battles, you survived captivity and you came home. I salute your valor … as we present a new medal that honors those who served honorably as prisoners of war … Our country has not forgotten your former comrades who are still missing … We must … demand the fullest possible accounting of the Americans who are missing in action.”
But Trump couldn’t honor POW sacrifice or show respect for the family sacrifices of MIAs. Instead he gave his usual stump speech, talking about “winning” and how he’ll correct terrible trade deals and terrible health care for veterans even as he deals with the terrible media.
So why couldn’t he give recognition to the work of a veterans organization which deals largely with Vietnam veterans?
Could it be that anything associated with “Vietnam” reminds him of what he calls his “personal Vietnam,” a post-traumatic stress syndrome kind of condition that renders him incapable of dealing reasonably with the nation’s Vietnam era?
In a 1997 interview with radio disc jockey Howard Stern, Trump, who used student deferments and a “heel spur” medical deferment to get out of military service during the Vietnam War, said the danger he faced from getting sexually transmitted diseases when he was sleeping around in the United States was his own “personal Vietnam.”
“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era,” he said. “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
Las Vegan Dean Whitaker, a 91-year-old World War II POW who has carefully followed Trump’s campaign, doubts Trump, who has helped raise nearly $6 million for veterans’ organizations, will suffer at the ballot box because of what he’s said, or didn’t say, about military service.
“I don’t think he’s ever meant harm by what he says,” he said. “You can tell by the way he supports veterans’ organizations that he has the best interests of veterans at heart.”
Paul Harasim’s column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Nevada section and Thursday in the Life section. Contact him at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @paulharasim on Twitter.