Draft:Donald Trump Military Disrespect Controversy

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During Donald Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, a political issue that gained widespread public attention was his attitude towards the U.S. military and its veterans. Multiple declarations by Trump were broadly denounced by the veteran’s community, in addition to leadership from both the Democratic and Republican parties.^[1][2] Trump’s comments included the controversial questioning of U.S. Senator John McCain’s service in the Vietnam War, remarks towards the Gold Star family of a slain Muslim U.S. solider^[3][4], and the unprecedented criticism by a presidential candidate of the U.S. military’s top leadership^[5] and recent strategy.

During the election, the Trump campaign repeatedly downplayed the controversies, dismissing the combative rhetoric as “who he [Trump] was”^[2] and characterizing him as an anti-war candidate seeking to withdraw the U.S. from is Middle Eastern post-9/11 era conflicts. Trump ultimately won the race to become the 45th U.S. president and in doing so became the first president in American history with no prior political and no prior military service. Throughout Trump’s presidency, his relations with the veterans’ community and broader U.S. military leadership continued to erode to the point that by his term’s end^[6], U.S. civilian-military relations were seen to have reached a “crisis” according to Washington’s leading national security analysts.^[7] The contentious issues included Trump labeling top military officials as “losers” and “dopes and babies”, repeated incidents of disrespectful behavior at remembrance ceremonies^[8] allegedly referring to slain U.S. soldiers as “losers” and “suckers” for sacrificing for their country and voiced concern about wounded veterans attending military parades for fear they would offend spectators. At multiple times during the Trump 2016 campaign, 45th presidency and 2020 presidential campaign, hundreds of former Pentagon, Department of State and intelligence community officials voiced concern over Trump’s character^[9] as related to respecting U.S. military protocol and traditions in addition to overall national security issues in interviews, published open letters and opinion pieces.^[10]

Significant unease over Trump’s effort to use the U.S. military for partisan political purposes were widespread during 2020, particularly related to Trump’s efforts to use the 1807 Insurrection Act^[11] to deploy active-duty military units against American citizens, a push repeatedly blocked by the Pentagon. The first incident occurred June 1, 2020 amid the nationwide unrest caused by the George Floyd police brutality protests in which Trump demanded the deployment of 10,000 active-duty troops to the streets of Washington and other U.S. cities in an Oval Office meeting with Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who opposed this request.^[12][13][14] In November after his 2020 election loss, Trump fired Esper over the Insurrection Act, after Esper refused to deploy troops amid Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud.

Pollsters noted that Trump‘s turbulent history with the Pentagon and unprecedented disrespect for U.S. military protocols impacted his performance among veterans in the 2020 election which he lost to Democratic challenger Joe Biden, whose son served a year in the Iraq War with the Delaware Army National Guard.^[15]

During the Trump administration, multiple accounts of his youthful views towards military service and the U.S. military in general, surfaced.^[16]