Responding to President Donald Trump's vicious tweets aimed at Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) over his military service, a columnist for the Boston Globe unloaded on the president for his continuing attacks on veterans after having ducked the military himself.
Monday morning, Trump took time out from his vacation to attack Blumenthal following his appearance on CNN where the senator remarked that a grand jury investigation could turn up evidence of serious wrongdoing by the president and his campaign associates during the 2016 campaign.
“Never in U.S. history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like Senator Richard Blumenthal,” Trump tweeted. “He told stories about his Vietnam battles and. conquests, how brave he was, and it was all a lie. He cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child. Now he judges collusion?”
According to Globe columnist Joan Vennochi, Trump's attack on Blumenthal after not having served is part of his "non-stop bullying and hypocrisy" of veterans who disagree with him.
"It’s no surprise that as president, Trump would feel free to attack Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, for misrepresenting his military record," Vennochi wrote. "Compared with attacking the parents of an army captain killed in Iraq, that barely registers as outrageous. The news is that even Trump’s newly installed chief of staff, retired Marine General John Kelly, whose son was killed in Afghanistan, can’t keep the president from shamelessly lashing out on the topic of military service."
The columnist then took up Trump's own lack of experience with the military.
"As a young man, Trump was an athlete who played baseball, football, tennis, and squash. But, according to the Times, after graduating from college in 1968, he received five deferments, including one for bone spurs in the heel," she wrote. "Meanwhile, he continued to claim that a high draft number kept him out of Vietnam, even though he was medically exempted for more than a year when the draft lottery began in December 1969."
"Trump’s lack of military service did not stop him from declaring that Senator John McCain, a prisoner of war during Vietnam, was 'not a war hero' because 'I like people who weren’t captured.' Nor did it stop Trump from attacking the Muslim American parents of a soldier who was killed in Iraq, after they appeared at the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. In an emotional speech, the father, Khizr Khan, offered to lend Trump his copy of the US Constitution and declared: 'You have sacrificed nothing and no one.'”
Vennochi concurred.
"The president is staying true to the presidential candidate. As his critics continue to note, there’s no grace or humility, just non-stop bullying and hypocrisy," she wrote, before concluding, "With his latest tweets, Trump displays even more disrespect and disregard for people who have actually served in the military and truly sacrificed. Trump can’t stop himself and no one can stop him. It’s not shocking any more, just depressing."
You can read the whole thing here.
