President Joe Biden choked up Wednesday as he blasted Donald Trump, saying the presumptive Republican presidential nominee “doesn't deserve to be my son's commander in chief.”
Biden's scathing comment referred to each his late son Beau Biden, who served as a significant within the Delaware Army National Guardand Trump is alleged to have named dead US soldiers in French Cemetery “Suckers and losers” when he was president.
The incumbent Democrat made the remarks during a speech to a gaggle of United Steelworkers union members in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“But as I did it today, one of the things I was reminded of was what my opponent said in Paris not long ago,” Biden said.
“They asked him to go to American gravesites. He said 'No.'” “He wouldn't do it because they were all suckers and losers,” Biden said, citing reports of Trump's reasoning.
“I’m not making this up. The employees who were with him admit it today. Idiots and losers. This man doesn’t deserve it,” Biden said, pausing for a few seconds as he choked up before adding, “To be the commander.” Boss to my son.
A spokesperson for Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on Biden's statement.
Beau Biden, Delaware's attorney general, served in the National Guard's Judge Advocate General's Corps. Beginning in 2008, he spent a year on active duty in the Guard, which included a seven-month deployment to Iraq.
Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 while his father was vice president in former President Barack Obama's administration.
In October, Trump's former White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed this CNN Details from a 2020 article in The Atlantic This included derogatory comments about members of the US military.
The Atlantic article, written by Jeffrey Goldberg, begins with a description of how then-President Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery just outside Paris in 2018, claiming that rain had prevented a helicopter from flying it and that This was the case. The Secret Service would not drive him there.
“None of the allegations were true,” Goldberg wrote.
“Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would be disheveled in the rain and because he did not believe it was important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day Goldberg wrote.
“In a conversation with senior staff on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, 'Why would I go to that cemetery? It's full of losers,'” the article says.
“In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump called the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood 'idiots' because they were killed.”
Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, told CNN in October: “What else can I add that hasn't already been said?”
“A person who thinks that those who defend their country in uniform, are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or are tortured for years as prisoners of war are all 'idiots' because 'there's nothing in it for them,'” Kelly said.
“A person who didn't want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because 'that doesn't look good to me.'” A one who appeared on television in the course of the 2016 election campaign to indicate open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families. Star Families – demonstrated and railed that our most precious heroes who gave their lives defending America were “losers” and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
A Trump spokesman responded to CNN in response to this article: “John Kelly has made an entire idiot of himself with these debunked stories that he made up because he didn’t serve his president well during his tenure as chief of staff.”
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