In the previous two installments of this trio of diaries (Part One and Part Two) we saw a portrait of an ignorant, selfish, draft-dodging coward with delusions of grandeur, a walking cancerous tumor of a human being who disrespected those who showed genuine heroism and competence. In our final installment, we will address the worst of Trump’s lies and some of the very worst of his actions.
TRUMP LIE: That he “rebuilt” a “depleted” military. Trump repeatedly has asserted that he “rebuilt” the military at a cost of $2.5 trillion, primarily invested in new equipment.
Politifact is on the case:
The Pentagon spent roughly $419 billion on procurement through the first three fiscal years of Trump’s presidency, and Congress appropriated about $143.5 billion more in the spending bill Trump signed for the 2020 fiscal year, bringing that total to about $562.5 billion.
The rest of the defense dollars over the last four years have been directed toward research and development, military personnel, and operation and maintenance costs, among other things.
Experts also noted that the bulk of the $2.5 trillion would have been spent anyway, regardless of who was president. (My emphasis)
"Most of that money was going to be spent under Obama," said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. "Trump’s net increases have been about $100 billion each year, or $400 billion total compared with earlier expectations."
The administration’s scaled-up defense spending has helped make troops and equipment more ready for combat, O’Hanlon said. But overall, Trump’s claim of a total rebuild is "hyperbole."
"Most weapons are the same as before," O’Hanlon said. "There is more continuity than change in defense policy from Obama to Trump."
FactCheck.org is on the case as well:
At times, [Trump] mentions the figure for the defense budgets without stipulating what specifically the money bought. “I’ve rebuilt our military. I spent two and a half trillion dollars. Nobody else did,” he told Fox News on June 11. (As we explained, Obama did indeed approve budgets totaling more than that.)
But other times, he has made the false claim about all of the funding going for equipment, or “new planes, ships, submarines, tanks, missiles, rockets — anything you can think of.”
Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told us when Trump has claimed $2-plus trillion was spent on military equipment, that’s “absolutely untrue.”
“What we spend on military equipment is a fraction of the defense budget,” Harrison said.
The Washington Post weighs in, too.
There have been times when President Trump has uttered a talking point so silly that we simply have tossed it into our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims. But then it keeps coming back, like a zombie, usually during the president’s campaign rallies…
But now the president actually used this misleading claim — that he has invested more than $2 trillion in the military — in a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. So here’s a quick fact check and a Pinocchio rating…
The president is exaggerating his “investment” in the military, especially when he suggests that he has spent more than $2 trillion on new equipment. It’s a good thing that he not using a completely invented number, but we hope we’re not grading on a Trump curve. He earns Three — that’s with a T — Pinocchios.
TRUMP LIE: The military was “out of ammunition” when he took office.
Vox has the goods:
“When I took over our military, we did not have ammunition,” Trump said. “I was told by a top general, maybe the top of them all, ‘Sir, I’m sorry sir, we don’t have ammunition.’ I said, I will never let that happen to another president.”… [A “Sir” story. Trump is famous for them.]
In reality, the United States spent $611 billion on the military in 2016. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), a veteran who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and was first elected to Congress in 2016, noted Trump’s comments were “not true.”
“I get briefings as a member of the House Armed Services Committee on our munitions stockpile all over the world,” Gallego tweeted. “We have never run out of ammunition.”
There were some shortages. But the reason for them is interesting:
According to military leaders, there was a shortfall in certain kinds of munitions, particularly precision-guided bombs, late in the Obama presidency and early in the Trump presidency -- after the US used tens of thousands of these munitions in the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Obama administration
Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in February 2016: "We've recently been hitting ISIL with so many GPS-guided smart bombs and laser-guided rockets that we are starting to run low on the ones that we use against terrorists the most. So we're investing $1.8 billion in (fiscal year 2017) to buy over 45,000 more of them."
In other words, Obama was raining so much hell down on ISIS that we were beginning to run low a little bit.
TRUMP LIE: That he gave the military their first pay raise in years.
From Military Times:
“You haven’t gotten [a raise] in more than 10 years. More than 10 years!” he told a crowd of applauding service members during his remarks at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Wednesday. “And we got you a big one. I got you a big one.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that troops hadn’t seen a pay raise during President Barack Obama’s time in the White House. In fact, troops have seen a pay raise of at least 1 percent every year for more than 30 years. [My emphasis.]
The president also appeared to claim he pushed for a 10 percent pay raise in 2019, even though the actual rate his administration publicly supported and eventually got approved was only 2.6 percent.
“[People said] we could make it 3 percent. We could make it 2 percent. We could make it 4 percent," he told the troops. “I said, ‘No, make it 10 percent. Make it more than 10 percent.’ Because it’s been a long time. It’s been more than 10 years. That’s a long time.”
The 2018 military pay raise, approved in Trump’s first year in office, was 2.4 percent. It was the largest the military had seen in eight years, but followed a federal formula matching the expected rise in civilian sector wages for the year.
TRUMP LIE: That he pushed the Veterans Choice Act.
Trump said he passed a private-sector health care program, Veterans Choice, after failed attempts by past presidents for the last “45 years.” That’s not true. The Choice program, which allows veterans to see doctors outside the government-run VA system at taxpayer expense, was first passed in 2014 under President Barack Obama.
Trump’s VA secretary, Robert Wilkie, also is distorting the facts. Faulting previous “bad leadership” at VA, Wilkie suggested it was his own efforts that improved waiting times at VA medical centers and brought new offerings of same-day mental health service. The problem: The study cited by Wilkie on wait times covers the period from 2014 to 2017, before Wilkie took the helm as VA secretary. Same-day mental health services at VA were started during the Obama administration.
FACT: JOHN McCAIN AND BERNIE SANDERS PUSHED FOR THE LEGISLATION. TRUMP HAS LIED ABOUT THIS MORE THAN 150 TIMES.
It’s just disgusting.
Trump uses the military like a prop. His ludicrous proposal for a military parade and his use of the military for his Fourth of July celebration are prime examples, but there are others, as laid out in this Op-Ed, The Military is Not a Political Prop. NOTE: Trump did not want wounded and disabled veterans at his parades. “Nobody wants to see that”, Trump reportedly said.
Now, on to the final atrocities.
Trump betrayed the Kurds and put our troops at risk.
The Kurds were our loyal allies in fighting ISIS, taking thousands of casualties in the process. Trump’s precipitate action in withdrawing 1,000 U.S. personnel from Syria and acceding to Turkey’s anti-Kurdish demands was a shocking betrayal.
American bases were abandoned to the Russians.
Insider summarized the impact of this:
- When Trump ordered US troops to abandon the Kurds in Northern Syria, Turkish forces stormed the newly unprotected area.
- Within days of the Americans abandoning their bases, "reporters" from the Russian defence ministry's TV channel began broadcasting from there.
- This is an intelligence (and propaganda) gift to Russia.
- Moscow will carefully examine the abandoned bases for communications infrastructure, construction materials and techniques, and battlefield medical equipment.
- Each new piece of knowledge will improve their understanding of Western tactics, techniques and operations, helping to develop countermeasures for future conflicts.
From The Washington Post’s David Ignatius:
At a gathering last Saturday night of military and intelligence veterans, one topic shrouded the room: President Trump’s decision to abandon Kurdish fighters in Syria who had fought and died to help America destroy the Islamic State.
“It’s a dagger to the heart to walk away from people who shed blood for us,” one former top CIA official who attended the black-tie dinner told me later. A retired four-star general who was there said the same thing: Trump’s retreat was an “unsound, morally indefensible act” and a “disgrace” to America and the soldiers who serve this country.
This sense of anguish was pervasive among those attending the event, several attendees said. It was an annual dinner honoring the Office of Strategic Services, the secret World War II commando group that was a forerunner of today’s CIA and Special Operations forces. The event celebrated the military alliances that have always been at the center of American power. It was a bitter anniversary this year.
The Turks brutally attacked the Kurds, attacks which included the use of white phosphorous weapons. I was going to include a video of a Kurdish child screaming in agony after having been subjected to such an attack. I couldn’t bear to look at it for very long. It’s too terrible.
How can ANYONE support this bastard?
From CNN:
A wide range of American military personnel and defense officials are expressing a deep sense of frustration and anger at the Trump administration's refusal to support Syrian Kurds facing a Turkish military assault, over half a dozen US military and defense officials have told CNN.
Several US military and defense officials, including personnel deployed to Syria, expressed dismay at how the Trump administration has handled the situation.
One US official said it is well known that some senior US military officials are livid at how the Kurds have been treated given their role in helping the US fight ISIS.
Another senior American defense official told CNN that Trump's failure to more forcefully oppose the invasion or do anything to stop the attacks on the Kurds meant Trump had given Turkey a green light, despite the administration's public stance that it had consistently opposed the operation.
Under pressure, Trump supported sanctions against Turkey. But the terrible damage was done.
TRUMP WILL BETRAY ANYONE.
Trump has done NOTHING about the fact that Vladimir Putin has put bounties on the heads of our soldiers in Afghanistan
Let me first quote our own Mark Sumner:
There are so many other items that could be mentioned. The vile treatment of the Vindman brothers for their acts of conscience in exposing Trump’s criminality is one example. Trump’s callous dismissal of the suffering of those with traumatic brain injuries would be another. But in the end, let’s listen to General James Mattis, who was Trump’s first Defense Secretary. Writing in the period of civil unrest this summer, Mattis said:
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
He goes on to contrast the American ethos of unity with Nazi ideology. “Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that ‘The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”
FOR FURTHER READING: Trump says he supports the troops. His record suggests otherwise.
Trump is the most anti-military president we’ve had — and he doesn’t even know it
Another list with many items I didn’t have time to include.