Donald Trump’s trip to Europe has been an embarrassment from the moment he landed. From publicly calling Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, “nasty” after she declined to meet with Trump or the attention-grabbing (in all the wrong ways) Bugs Bunny-inspired tuxedo (seen below) to being publicly contradicted by the prime minister of Ireland over border policies to ripping off a late-night Twitter screed against actress Bette Middler, Trump’s trip has largely been a failure.
Now that he’s finished having tea with the queen, he’s moved on to more solemn duties, specifically attending the 75th anniversary commemoration of D-Day, the day an estimated 150,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers stormed Omaha beach in Normandy, France, While the total number of fatalities that day is still being counted, the historians say anywhere between 5,000 and 12,000 Allied troops died that day.
D-Day survivors and the family members of troops who perished on that beach were in attendance, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was leading a bipartisan delegation of Congress members. She was also there in remembrance of her uncle, Pvt. John B. D’Alesandro, who landed in Normandy and later died in the Battle of the Bulge. World leaders are also in attendance to deliver speeches and commemorate the battle where so many lives were lost. It was a solemn event—at least, one would think that would be the case. But not in the upside down world we live in now.
Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel (yes, related to that other Romney) took to Fox News to scold the media for publicizing the embarrassing actions of Donald Trump and his family. She said today, the day when thousands and thousands of men died in a bloody, war-changing battle, today is the day we should be “celebrating” Donald Trump. Really. The Republican party is no longer anchored to any morals, values, or dignity. They are completely adrift and oblivious to their own complete moral failing.
For his part, Donald Trump gave a speech at the ceremony, but not before sitting down to do an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News. With the backdrop of the Allied graves, Trump used the opportunity to lie and smear decorated Vietnam veteran Robert Mueller, saying Mueller “made a fool out of himself,” and then went onto demean Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He couldn’t be bothered to set aside partisanship and his own ego for one day to commemorate D-Day. It’s all Donald, all the time. Perhaps he even believes D-Day really means Donald Day.
Perhaps it would have meant more to Donald Trump if there had been a marker in the cemetery with the name Trump, but to my knowledge, nobody in Trump’s family has ever served in the military. In fact, his grandfather Freiderich Trump emigrated to the United States as a 16-year-old unaccompanied minor so that he could escape three years of compulsory military service in Germany. The draft-dodging apple didn’t fall far from the tree as Donald Trump would go on to get five questionable deferments that kept him out of the Vietnam war.
Not only did Donald Trump’s father not serve in the military, he was investigated by the Senate in 1954 for wartime profiteering. It was alleged he used Federal Housing funds intended to be used to create new housing for veterans to instead build the Trump real estate empire, something that really pissed off President Eisenhower.
Eisenhower truly loved the fighting men he’d led to victory in World War II. When he learned of the manipulations practiced by developers to increase their profits he called them “sons of bitches.” After his investigation McKenna reported that Trump ranked near the top among builders who shared in excess payments approved by the FHA officials who were almost certainly on the take. His findings led to Senate hearings directed by Homer Capehart, a senator from Indiana, and Connecticut’s Prescott Bush, whose grandson Jeb was then 1 years old.
McKenna’s testimony about Trump had appalled Capehart, who said the details had made him “nauseous” and that builders had taken advantage of both the federal government and countless World War II vets. Capehart, a Republican, also said that the builders and the FHA were mired in “a grand scandal” far worse than the infamous Teapot Dome corruption case of the 1920s, in which bribes were accepted by officials to grant rich oil leases on federal land.
And now the party who says they support the troops, the party who crows about their “family values” and their patriotism … they are now the party of Donald Trump. They are now lecturing us to celebrate Trump on a day we should be remembering the tens of thousands of Allied troops who actually sacrificed for the world.
Not a chance.
In case you missed it, here’s that embarrassing Bugs Bunny-inspired tuxedo.
