Speaking to reporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Trump was asked about the attack in the context of the recent missile attack on Israel by Iran.
Reporter: Do you believe that you should have been tougher on Iran after they had launched ballistic missiles in 2020, on U.S. forces in Iraq, leaving more than a hundred U.S. soldiers injured?
Donald Trump: So, first of all injured, what does injured mean? Injured means you mean because they had a headache, because the bombs never hit the fort? … And if you were a very truthful reporter, which you’re not, you would tell the following: None of those very accurate missiles hit our fort. They all hit outside and there was nobody hurt, other than the sound—it was loud, and some people said that hurt and I accept that.
This is false. According to the Pentagon, at least 109 troops were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries after the attack on the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq in January 2020. According to the Mayo Clinic, traumatic brain injuries can affect brain cells and can also result in physical damage to the brain, leading to death or long-term medical complications.
In 2021, the Army approved awarding Purple Hearts to many of the troops affected by the attack.
Trump also minimized the attack in 2020, when he was president. After the incident first occurred, Trump claimed, “No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime.” A few days later he said, “I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things.”
His rhetoric sparked condemnation from the group Veterans of Foreign Wars , who said in a statement, “The VFW expects an apology from the president to our service men and women for his misguided remarks.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, then serving as a U.S. senator, wrote, “The invisible wounds of war like a traumatic brain injury are serious—and Trump saying otherwise is absolutely despicable.”
Vice President Kamala Harris
Trump has been involved in multiple incidents where he has disparaged members of the military and military service. In August, he staged a campaign photo op at Arlington National Cemetery in an area where it is forbidden, and members of his campaign became involved in a verbal and physical altercation with cemetery staff as a result.
That month, Trump said that the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is awarded to civilians, is “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor given to members of the military.
“It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor—that’s soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Trump said. Trump once awarded the presidential medal to notorious bigot Rush Limbaugh.
When he first ran for president in 2015, Trump responded to criticism from the late Sen. John McCain by remarking, “I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain was held as a prisoner of war for five and a half years in Vietnam, from 1967 to 1973, and was tortured during that time.
During that campaign Trump also heaped criticism on the parents of Captain Humayun Khan, an American Army officer who was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq. Khizr Khan, the fallen soldier’s father, spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, criticizing Trump for the Muslim ban and emphasizing the varieties of faiths and ethnicities that serve in the U.S. military.
Multiple sources also told The Atlantic in 2020 that Trump referred to Americans who died in military service as “suckers” and “losers,” an account which was later verified by John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff in the White House.
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