By now, you’d think we’d be completely numb to Donald Trump‘s barrage of inane utterances, but now and again 45 does something that makes you sit up and contemplate the entire sorry insanity of Trump’s rise to power, and potential second rise all over again.
In this case, it’s Trump’s comments on former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley. On March 20, the high-ranking general offered a rare testimony, alongside U.S. Central Command retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, in which he blamed the Biden administration for Afghanistan falling to the Taliban following the withdrawal of American troops in August 2021. Meanwhile an internal White House review determined that Biden was “severely constrained” by withdrawal negotiations made by Trump.
Any kind of blowback to their sainted leader naturally irritated right-wing site Newsmax, who when trying to discredit Milley brought up comments he made to The Atlantic in September 2023, in which alleged Trump’s private response to severely wounded war vet Luis Avila being chosen to sing “God Bless America” at a function held at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall back in 2019. “Why do you bring people like that here?” he told Milley. “No one wants to see that, the wounded.”
Of course, instead of refuting the claims or having anything worthwhile to say, Trump reacted to Newxmax’s coverage with as much eloquence and intelligence as you would expect from a man who uses words like “bigly” and thinks Obama is still president. Sharing his thoughts on his favorite social media app, Truth Social (which blessedly went down for a stretch on Wednesday, but sadly it made an unwanted comeback, just like its most famous user), Trump simply wrote: “Mark Milley is a loser.”
I know, in the grand scheme of the terrible things Trump has said and done, calling Milley a “loser” isn’t among his most egregious, and yet it’s still a perfect example of why his credibility to become president a second time is non-existent. The ability to restrain from lashing out in petty anger and approach every ideological or personal conflict from a place of diplomacy and tact is the baseline for what any leader of the country needs to be, and we all know far too well that Trump doesn’t possess a shred of the required maturity for that.
When he doesn’t agree with someone, Trump doesn’t attempt to outline his position or defend his decisions or convince you why they are mistaken, he resorts to name-calling like a kid who’s had his ball stolen. Although, of course, during his own school days, Trump was more likely to be the kid stealing the ball. When attending military school in his adolescence, teen Trump attempted to throw a fellow cadet out of a second-floor window.
Trump’s attitude and dismissive words towards Milley also strongly recall his infamous comments on the late John McCain, who he described as “not a war hero” because the former POW was “captured.” In fact, Trump is reported to have called McCain a “loser” in private multiple times. Supposedly, upon seeing flags at half-mast following McCain’s death from brain cancer in 2018, Trump barked at his aides: “What the f*** are we doing that for? Guy was a f***ing loser.”
It should be pointed out that, although he attended military academy, Trump never served in the military himself, as he avoided the Vietnam War draft a full five times. So maybe his juvenile reduction of military conflicts to simply “winners” and “losers” has something to do with that. In any case, we’ll find out who the real loser is come the election this November.