Donald Trump reportedly referred to the 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood, a place venerated by the Marine Corps where the German advance toward Paris was stopped in 1918, as “suckers” because “there is nothing in it for them.” One report said he refused to go to the cemetery, saying “why should I go to that cemetery, it’s filled with losers.”
Trump said about Sen. John McCain, a Navy airman who was shot down over North Vietnam and captured and tortured for more than five years, “he’s not a war hero. … I like people who weren’t captured.”
Trump received a bone spur deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War, but lamented that his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases were his “personal Vietnam.”
Trump reportedly asked, when referring to a severely wounded Army captain who sang “God Bless America” at a formal military ceremony, “why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”
On Memorial Day we honored the men and women who have given so much to protect our democracy. Remembering their sacrifices, we need to ask: Is Trump the kind of person we want to be our nation’s commander in chief?
Donald R. Walko Jr.
Ohio Township
The writer is a former Pennsylvania House member and former Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas judge.