Presidential historian trashes Trump’s ‘disgraceful’ speech to troops in Iraq

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss lectured President Donald Trump on MSNBC for politicizing the military during a Wednesday visit to Iraq.

Beschloss appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" with guest host Joy Reid.

"Yesterday Donald Trump flew to the air base in Iraq to visit the U.S. troops stationed there. That part, that part there's precedent for," Reid explained. "What's unprecedented is how this particular president spoke while he was there."

Reid played a clip of the commander-in-chief whining about Democrats refusing to spend taxpayer funds to build his wall.

"I thought it was obscene," Beschloss noted.

"Just as you were saying, the president goes to speak to Americans whose lives are in jeopardy, the tradition is you keep it nonpolitical -- you try to unite the group," he explained.

"And for him to start talking about -- in a nasty way -- about Democrats and Nancy Pelosi and we've been played for suckers in the past, that's fine if you want to say those things at a Trump rally, because people go to a Trump rally voluntarily and if they hear things they do not like, they can leave," he reminded. "These are young Americans for the most part who have chosen to serve their country, if the president says something they privately disagree with they don't have the right to jeer him or get up and leave the way the rest of us do if we're here in the United States."

"I thought it was disgraceful," he added.

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