9/4/20
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden moved quickly on Friday to capitalize on bombshell allegations that President Donald Trump called American service-members who died in combat “losers” and “suckers,” releasing a campaign ad featuring Trump’s remarks juxtaposed over the white crosses in Aisne-Marne American Military Cemetery in France. “Mr. President, if you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them,” Biden said in a tweet releasing the ad. Trump’s remarks — first reported by The Atlantic and confirmed in part by the Washington Post and the Associated Press — have given Biden a tailor-made opportunity to lean into an existing strategy of painting Trump as unsupportive of U.S. troops. In a speech on Monday, Biden hammered Trump for failing to address Russian bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan with Moscow, arguing that “not even American troops can feel safer under Trump.” Trump has a track record of blunt remarks seen by detractors as unacceptably disrespectful towards American troops. In 2016, eleven Gold Star families wrote a letter to Trump accusing him of “cheapening the sacrifice” of their deceased relatives by criticizing the parents of Captain Humayun S.M. Khan for speaking out against him at the Democratic National Convention. Khan died in Iraq in 2004.
Biden’s focus on Trump’s support for troops comes at a moment when support for the sitting U.S. president among U.S. service members appears to be sharply declining. The latest Military Times poll, released this week, shows a steady drop in support for Trump since his election four years ago. At this point in the 2016 campaign, Trump led then-candidate Hillary Clinton by 20 points. Now, Biden holds a four-point edge over Trump among active-duty troops — and that poll was released before The Atlantic story became public. The revelations about Trump’s remarks coincided with reports that the president had ordered the shuttering of the military’s independent newspaper Stars and Stripes, which publishes a print paper about U.S. troops on military bases all over the world. Democrats were quick to call for the decision to be reversed. “Not even a day after multiple sources confirm Trump disparaged U.S. service members, his admin is trying to shut down @starsandstripes, a news outlet for active duty forces and veterans that's existed since the 1800s,” tweeted Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who sits on the Armed Services Committee.