Adolf Hitler. Joseph Goebells. Joseph Stalin. Donald J Trump.
We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity. Our movement is Christian. Adolf Hitler, 27 October 1928.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating the lie, people will eventually come to believe it. Joseph Goebells, Third Reich Propaganda Minister, July 1939.
America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within. Joseph Stalin.
“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured”. Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, July 2015, disparaging Senator John McCain.
The president clearly sides with Putin. He is wrong. He is wrong on the facts, and most importantly, he is weak. This is cowardly”. Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush, 16 July 2018.
More from (former) candidate and (former) president Trump:
● In July 2015, then-presidential candidate Trump said Senator John McCain, who retired from the Navy as a captain, awarded a Silver Star and a Distinguished Flying Cross, was only a war hero because he had been taken hostage. McCain spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump said.
Trump also said that he didn’t like McCain after his loss to President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. “I never liked him after that, because I don’t like losers.”
‘Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral.’ Jeffery Goldberg, September 3, 2020. More later on the Goldberg piece in The Atlantic.
● In July 2016, Trump took aim at retired four-star General John Allen. “You know who he is? He’s a failed general. He was the general fighting ISIS. I would say he hasn’t done so well, right?” Trump said, according to reports.
● In July 2016, Trump attacked the family of Captain Humayun Khan, a slain soldier, dismissing a speech his father Khizr Khan made, because he said Khan’s mother hadn’t been allowed to speak.
Trump was referring to Islam tradition of female subservience, but the family said she had not spoken because she was too emotional to talk about her son’s death.
The elder Khan also said Trump had never sacrificed anything or lost anyone, to which Trump responded, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I’ve worked very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs.”
● In October 2017, Trump forgot the name of slain US army Sgt. La David Johnson, while he was on the phone with his widow. Johnson was killed in an ambush in Niger while in active service. Myeshia Johnson said the call with Trump made her cry, and that Trump told her that her husband “knew what he had signed up for.”
● In April 2018, Trump called James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, “a lying machine.” Trump was referring to Clapper’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2013, when he said the NSA did not wittingly collect data on Americans.
Clapper is a retired Air Force Lieutenant General, who served twice in Southeast Asia.
● In June 2018, Trump called Rep. Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania “Lamb the Sham,” when he endorsed Lamb’s opponent. Lamb is a Marine Corps veteran.
● In November 2018, Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Trump about his thoughts on retired Admiral William McRaven, a former Navy Seal who was behind the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden. He interrupted Wallace and said, “Hilary Clinton Fan.” When Wallace continued, Trump did, too. “Excuse me: Hilary. Clinton. Fan.”
● In January 2019, Trump said retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal, who led US forces in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2010, was fired by former President Barack Obama “like a dog.” He also said his final assignment was a total bust, that he was a Hilary Clinton lover, and he was known for his “big dumb mouth.”
● In May 2019, several days after the former special counsel Robert Mueller released his investigative report on Russian election interference and Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice, Trump tweeted the report had been constructed by “Trump Haters,” and called Mueller “highly conflicted.”
Mueller fought in the Vietnam War, and was awarded multiple awards, including a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
● In August 2019, Trump told Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, who served as a marine in Iraq, “You remain a frickin’ coward” when Moulton dropped out of the race to be the next Democrat presidential candidate.
Moulton was awarded a Bronze Star and a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medal. He was cited for his fearlessness for when he drew fire to himself to help four of his marines who were wounded.
● In October 2019, Trump called his former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a retired four-star general, “the world’s most overrated general,” after also saying Mattis wasn’t tough enough.
● In October 2019, John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, told a live audience that he’d told Trump not to hire a “yes man,” because if he did, he would get impeached. When Trump heard about it, he said, “John Kelly never said that, he never said anything like that. If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of the office. He just wants to come back into the action like everybody else does.”
Kelly is a retired Marine general who fought in the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War, and spent more than 45 years in the service.
“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” he asked on Memorial Day 2017, standing [with Kelly] beside the grave of Kelly’s son, who was killed in Afghanistan at age 29, according to the Goldberg piece in The Atlantic.
● In October 2019, Trump called Bill Taylor, the US’s chief envoy to Ukraine, who was a witness in Trump’s impeachment inquiry, and who had given evidence against him, a “Never Trumper.” He went on to say, “Never Trumpers” were “human scum.”
Taylor served as an Army infantry officer for six years, and completed two tours of Vietnam.
● In October 2019, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who served in Iraq, where he was wounded by an IED and received a Purple Heart, was attacked by Trump. After Vindman’s opening statement was released to the media, but before he’d given evidence at the impeachment inquiry, Trump called him a “Never Trumper.”
Vindman was on Trump’s National Security Council and was on the call when Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings.