Urging Florida To Ignore Military Votes Fits Trump's True Pattern With The Troops
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Urging Florida To Ignore Military Votes Fits Trump's True Pattern With The Troops
S.V. Date, HuffPost Mon, Nov 12 7:01 PM EST
WASHINGTON ― Two days after skipping a visit to an American military cemeteryWASHINGTON ― Two days after skipping a visit to an American military cemetery near Paris because it was raining, President Donald Trump called for effectively disenfranchising overseas military members voting in Florida, raising further questions about the draft-evading president’s commitment to the armed services.
“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” Trump tweeted early on Monday, the observed Veterans Day holiday for the federal government. “An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
Scott and DeSantis are the GOP’s candidates for U.S. senator and governor in Florida whose election-night margins of victory have resulted in legally mandated recounts.
But skipping those recounts would not only violate state law, it would ignore the ballots of tens of thousands of Florida-based troops deployed overseas. Those ballots are supposed to be counted if they arrive by this coming Friday.
“It’s a nice commentary from the commander-in-chief on Veterans Day,” said Will Fischer, who served in Iraq as a Marine and is now with the VoteVets group.
Less than two-and-a-half hours after Trump’s 7:44 a.m. tweet, the White House announced that Trump would remain there with no public events for the rest of the day.
“He’s not going to Arlington. He’s not even going up to Walter Reed,” Fischer said. “Once again, Donald Trump only sees the military as props. If it doesn’t benefit him, he’s not going to do it.”
Arlington National Cemetery is minutes from the White House across the Potomac River in Virginia. Walter Reed is the Army hospital a short helicopter ride away in Bethesda, Maryland, where service members wounded in combat are treated.
The White House did not respond to repeated queries about the president’s lack of a schedule on Monday. Nor did it respond to questions about Trump’s decision to cancel a visit to the American cemetery in France on Saturday and instead remain indoors tweeting, rather than go to an alternate site closer by.
Military officials in charge of transporting Trump prefer not to fly the Marine One helicopter through rain or fog, and the Secret Service prefers not to use motorcades for long drives when abroad.
In a statement to reporters during Trump’s flight back to Washington on Sunday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that a motorcade to the Aisne-Marne cemetery some 55 miles northeast of Paris would have lasted two-and-a-half hours each way and required many hours of road closures that would have been a major inconvenience for local residents.
The two-and-a-half-hour estimate, though, is considerably longer than the estimates from both Google Maps and Mappy , a site popular in France, which came up with one hour and 22 minutes on Monday afternoon. And presidential motorcades generally drive significantly faster than ordinary motorists are allowed to.
White House advance teams usually plan for contingencies, particularly weather, by coming up with alternative travel arrangements and alternative destinations.
“Advance teams, working in close coordination with the Secret Service, typically start building contingency plans weeks – if not months – in advance,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for then-President Barack Obama’s National Security Council who sat through many hours of advance team debriefs in the last administration.
“They do so with precisely this type of scenario in mind, and rain in this part of France would’ve been high on the list of envisioned contingencies,” Price said. “It would seem to strain credulity to believe that President Trump was unable to attend the ceremony. It seems much more likely that he chose not to.”
There are other American cemeteries and monuments closer to Paris, and Trump could have visited one of them instead, even on short notice. Quick unannounced visits are often deemed relatively safe by the Secret Service because potential adversaries have no time to plan for them, either.
Instead, as other European leaders braved the rain Saturday to attend commemorative services at various sites around Paris, Trump remained at the U.S. ambassador’s residence the entire afternoon and into the evening, when he arrived more than an hour late to a state dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Fischer, of VoteVets, is skeptical that the president even made good use of those hours. “I think he sat there in a bathrobe watching Fox News and tweeting ridiculousness,” he said.
During the afternoon, Trump had, in fact, issued tweets, including : “Trying to STEAL two big elections in Florida! We are watching closely!”
On the campaign trail in 2015, Trump claimed that he would be the “most militaristic” president the country had ever seen. (He likely meant he would be the most supportive of the military, rather than the one most prone to start wars, which is what that phrasing might more readily imply.)
His words and actions, though, have not necessarily reflected support for the military and its members. Before he became president, Trump insulted the late Sen. John McCain, a former POW, saying that he himself preferred those who had not been captured. He also insulted a Gold Star Muslim family whose son had been killed in 2004 in Iraq while saving those under his U.S. Army command.
Since he became president, Trump has made but a single visit to Dover Air Force Base to meet the returning coffins of fallen soldiers and has never visited troops in a combat zone. Even the two major accomplishments he boasts of ―providing record-high budgets for the military and passing a law to let veterans see local private doctors ― are both false.
Obama approved a $721 billion defense budget in 2010 and a $717 billion budget in 2011. Both were higher than the $716 billion budget this year that Trump repeatedly brags about – even before adjusting for inflation. And the “veterans choice” program that Trump claims passed because of him was actually also passed under Obama, in 2014.
And now, Trump has deployed thousands of troops to the Mexican border to string up barbed wire against what he describes as an “invasion” of Central American refugees seeking asylum, even though they are still hundreds of miles away. The soldiers are likely to remain there through the Thanksgiving holiday, at least.
“Ripping people from their families and their training and deploying them to the border for the purpose of, well, your guess is as good as mine,” Fischer said.
Trump himself avoided military service when he had the opportunity during the Vietnam War, receiving four education deferments and then claiming a medical exemption because of bone spurs in his heels.
He later compared the dangers of war to the risks of contracting sexually transmitted diseases from the women he was sleeping with. “It is my personal Vietnam,” he told radio host Howard Stern in 1997. “I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
Despite his personal avoidance of military service, though, Trump has long described himself as a great supporter of the armed forces and has particularly enjoyed the pageantry associated with it.
After attending France’s Bastille Day parade in 2017, Trump told the U.S. Defense Department that he wanted a full military parade of his own, including tanks, for Veterans Day 2018. But after cost estimates of $92 million for the event ― which included estimates for repairing roads damaged by the tanks – were leaked in August, Trump canceled the parade and announced he would go to Paris, instead.
“The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead attend the big parade already scheduled at Andrews Air Force Base on a different date, & go to the Paris parade, celebrating the end of the War, on November 11th. Maybe we will do something next year in D.C. when the cost comes WAY DOWN. Now we can buy some more jet fighters!” he wrote in a pair of Aug. 17 tweets .
But there was no parade of any consequence in Paris this past weekend. European leaders have been de-emphasizing military might and nationalism – among the causes of both World Wars – and emphasizing international cooperation, which Trump has openly disdained since taking office.
After receiving much criticism for skipping Saturday’s visit to the cemetery near Bellau Wood, where nearly 2,000 American troops died in a critical battle in 1918, Trump did keep his scheduled visit to the cemetery at Suresnes on the outskirts of Paris just before his flight back to the United States on Sunday.
- This article originally appeared on HuffPost .
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“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” Trump tweeted early on Monday, the observed Veterans Day holiday for the federal government. “An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
Scott and DeSantis are the GOP’s candidates for U.S. senator and governor in Florida whose election-night margins of victory have resulted in legally mandated recounts.
But skipping those recounts would not only violate state law, it would ignore the ballots of tens of thousands of Florida-based troops deployed overseas. Those ballots are supposed to be counted if they arrive by this coming Friday.
“It’s a nice commentary from the commander-in-chief on Veterans Day,” said Will Fischer, who served in Iraq as a Marine and is now with the VoteVets group.
Less than two-and-a-half hours after Trump’s 7:44 a.m. tweet, the White House announced that Trump would remain there with no public events for the rest of the day.
“He’s not going to Arlington. He’s not even going up to Walter Reed,” Fischer said. “Once again, Donald Trump only sees the military as props. If it doesn’t benefit him, he’s not going to do it.”
Arlington National Cemetery is minutes from the White House across the Potomac River in Virginia. Walter Reed is the Army hospital a short helicopter ride away in Bethesda, Maryland, where service members wounded in combat are treated.
The White House did not respond to repeated queries about the president’s lack of a schedule on Monday. Nor did it respond to questions about Trump’s decision to cancel a visit to the American cemetery in France on Saturday and instead remain indoors tweeting , rather than go to an alternate site closer by.
While I am no fan of Trump, the fact that that the source of your info is from the Huffington Post, who have a pronounced leftist liberal bias and are very much anti-Trump, it is difficult to give credibility to what they write about regarding politics in DC. I could be wrong, but they certainly do not seem to believe in writing anything bi-partisan.
What's to be pro-tRump about?
I largely ask the same question sometimes. There are some things that he has done that I approve of, but on the whole I have come to believe he is just not temperamentally suited to be president. I have the greatest respect for the office of the president and the big chair in the Oval Office, but there is no law that says I have to respect the man sitting in that chair.
What would those things be?
I agree with sending troops to our Southern border. I agree that our immigration system is severely broken and needs fixing. I agree we need much better border security.
Those are the three that came to mind off the top of my head. There are others but there is little need for me to go further. Have a good day.
You have not pointed out anything good that he has done. Why send troops to the southern border?
The other two things aren't anything he has done.
What part of the article are you disputing? Are you claiming he DID go to Arlington? Are you disputing that he was Tweeting then?
Sorry if what I answered did not exactly fit what you wanted to hear. If you do not like the answers you may get, then maybe you should not ask the question. I thought maybe you were asking a serious question, but now it just seems like a baited one. But then again I may not have properly stated myself originally.
But, to answer your first comment, I live 6 blocks from the AZ/Mexico border fence in SE Arizona. I have illegals running the alleys behind my house every night almost 365 days a year. Do not believe what you hear on the news about the number of apprehensions of illegals crossing the border. For every illegal apprehended, at least 5 to 10 more actually get away! My town of Douglas, AZ has one of the largest Border Patrol stations in the country. Restrictive rules of engagement tie many of the field agent's hands. Our Southern border in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas is extremely porous and has more holes that one of my late wife's pasta strainers! They need help and military troops on the border in a support capacity can help. I have many friends who are CBP agents who discuss their frustrations with the talking heads at DHS in DC who have their heads in the sand on what really goes on down on the border. There are just not enough CBP agents to adequately deal with the problem.
As for the other two, I said I agree with him on them. I did not say he had specifically done anything about them yet.
I'm curious, since you are living so close to the "action", what specifically would you like to see done? What ideas would you offer up to get it under control? "The wall" is worthless, as so many people have pointed it out, military is Constitutionally restricted from being deployed for law enforcement. Since you are seeing this on a daily basis, do you have any ideas on curtailing illegal immigration?
BTW, if you plan includes anything like mining the border or something, you can ignore the question.
As far as a "wall", the big misconception is that it needs to be a physical and solid one. We currently posess the technology to create and construct a virtual electronic one on our borders. But it needs to be a in depth one. The big problem is the expense and the lack of a unified national will to do so. As far as troops on the border. As I said above, their role should be strictly a support one. They can be used to spot and track suspected illegals immigrants and dry smugglers. They would then pass all relevant information on to CBP agents and let them engage and apprehend. In this way, the Posse Commitus act is not violated. As far as mining the border, that is s totally non productive solution.
I assume you are not talking a Star Trek like force field. But the only other type of electronic wall would do nothing in regards to stopping anyone from crossing, it would only give us a more accurate count of how many did cross.
Solve the cost and technology, then you will have enough votes to pass it. Only RWNJ's think that Democrats want an open border.
Which is the way they are used now. Problem is that once again this does not solve your problem, it just slightly improves your ability to count the number crossing. By the time Border Patrol agents arrive, they would be long gone since military cannot stop or hold them.
While your ideas may hold some merit, they will not stop or slow illegal crossing even if you triple the number of Border Patrol agents, and this, once again, rolls it back to $$cost$$.
“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” Trump tweeted early on Monday, the observed Veterans Day holiday for the federal government. “An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
This lie has been floating around on Newstalkers lately. Now I know where the lie came from.
General Bone Spur strikes again.
Since Veterans Day, he's been demoted to Major Jagoff.
And next Veteran's Day, we should have him demoted down to Lt Dick
Trump has disrespected them from the beginning. You respect them all or you respect none of them.
Anyone who respects our troops should respect John McCain regardless of politics, anyone who respects our troops should respect Gold Star Families like Khizir Khan's family, anyone who respects our troops would not send "troops" to a domestic situation over personal paranoia to the border doing "make work" over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Trump respects NOTHING, not his own political party, not the opposing political party, NOTHING.
Trump is an old man starting the early stages of dementia and he is the typical curmudgeon yelling at the sky or yelling to "get off my lawn" to imaginary boogeymen coming across the border.
Trump disrespected not only our troops but every man that ever fought or died in both World Wars in his atrocious behaviour overseas.
Trump respects nothing and other world leaders see it, they know it and they now no longer respect America.
It appears to me that he believes the military is all about the pomp and circumstance when nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the military is about death and destruction. I have nothing against that especially when they are protecting my ass
He's a man-child that never grew up.
LOL
Fischer has trump pegged right, but it's not just the military that's a prop for king trump, EVERYTHING, EVERYBODY and all EVENTS are props for the "king trump national reality show."
That's what happens when you get a ruler for entertainment value instead of intelligence.
Seems as though teapublicans like 2 types of veterans the best, dumb ones and dead ones.
Was that your opinion of Al Gore whether trued to keep the military absentee ballots from being counted?