Last night former Army Sergeant Corbin Reiff was interviewed on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show to respond to Donald Trump’s insane assertions that he or any of his other Iraq invasion military peers had absconded away with millions of dollars in American taxpayer money. Reiff’s appearance on MSNBC was driven in no small part by his viral Twitter rant from earlier that day. Reiff was able to elaborate on how rigorous the checks system was on distributing cash to Iraqi claimants. O’Donnell read Trump’s backpedal-quote about how he was talking about Iraqi soldiers and not American soldiers and then O’Donnell plays clips of Trump back in New Hampshire saying—pretty clearly—American soldiers. Reiff explained how Trump’s excuse wasn’t even plausible.
I don’t know what Iraqi soldiers he might be referring to. I know that in my experience, with the Forty Striker Brigade combat team, when we handled our claims’ missions, no Iraqi soldiers were involved in that process. No Iraqi soldiers handled cash. The only thing that their mission involved when it came to our claims missions was to provide security for the council area where citizens could come in to the neighborhoods and feel safe and hand in their information to us.
Former Sgt. Reiff goes on to explain how Trump may not “understand the sacrifice that soldiers make to take time out of their lives away from their families to deploy and not pocket money.”