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Trump allies slam Biden and recall his support for Iraq War to defend POTUS against the Atlantic report

'Trump fixed the VA after Obama-Biden left it in shambles/scandal' and 'Trump is trying to end forever wars,' the president's eldest son tweeted

President Donald Trump’s camp has been firefighting the allegations revealed by a recent report in The Atlantic that he insulted American soldiers who were martyred in the Battle of Belleau Wood in Europe in 1918. Trump has hit back at the September 3 report questioning its basis and now, his allies have brought up the Iraq War (2003) to drag Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden into the controversy.

Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, for instance, attacked Biden and Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic who penned the shocking story. In a tweet posted Sunday, September 6, Trump Jr wrote: “Joe Biden & his media propagandists like @JeffreyGoldberg pretend to care about the troops, but Goldberg printed lies about phony ties between Al-Qaeda & Iraq that politicians like Biden used as justification to vote to send Americans to die in Iraq. Blood is on their hands!!!”

He also said in another post: “Trump fixed the VA after Obama-Biden left it in shambles/scandal," Trump Jr went on. "Trump is trying to end forever wars. Biden voted for Iraq War & has a 50 yr record supporting unnecessary wars. Trump properly funded our military after Obama-Biden decimated it. Who really disrespects our troops?”

'Propaganda for Military Industrial Complex'

The president’s son posted his tweet while retweeting one by Republican strategist Andrew Surabian who accused Goldberg of being “a propagandist for the Military Industrial Complex” on September 4. He said: “Not only does @JeffreyGoldberg have low editorial standards, he's long been a propagandist for the Military Industrial Complex. He pushed their lies to get us into the Iraq War & is pushing their easily debunked lies about Trump, b/c unlike Biden, Trump won't support their wars.”

Surabian also followed up his own comment on Sunday to say in another tweet: “It says everything about how broken the media is that after @JeffreyGoldberg helped lie this nation into the Iraq War, he wasn't run out of journalism in embarrassment, but rather given promotions to continue his shoddy 'journalism' unabated". In both the tweets, Surabian posted images of a couple of 2002 war-related articles of Goldberg published in The New Yorker.

Trump War Room, a twitter account run by the president’s campaign, also came up with a 13-year-old video in which the business-turned-politician spoke highly about troops returning from Iraq. Trump War Room, a Twitter account operated by the Trump campaign, shared a video from 2007 of Trump discussing veterans returning from Iraq. “Nobody talks about the soldiers that are coming back with no arms and no legs... The most beautiful people I've ever seen,” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview. However, The Atlantic article claimed that the president was against including amputees in a military parade that the White House was planning in 2018 saying “nobody wants to see that”.

It also shared another video showing the president picking up a Marine’s hat that flew away in strong wind, not once but twice, to show the respect he harbors for the personnel in uniform.

Goldberg’s article said Trump refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris during his visit to France in November 2018 to commemorate the centenary of the First World War (1914-18) because he did not want his hair to get ruined in the rain. It was also alleged that the president called the buried American soldiers who lost their lives fighting the Germans in the Battle of Belleau Wood as “losers” and “suckers”. Goldberg, however, was unfazed by the criticism and said in a recent interview to CNN that more information on the episode was due to come out and the magazine will continue doing its work no matter what.

Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative outfit Turning Point USA and a supporter of the president, also slammed Biden for voting in favor of the Iraq War of 2003, a point over which even his Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders targeted him during the primaries. “Joe Biden voted for and championed the Iraq war. Joe Biden was VP when our four Americans were abandoned in Benghazi...Joe Biden is a terrorist appeaser. That is his foreign policy legacy,” Kirk said.

Earlier this year, Biden was confronted by an air force veteran in Oakland after he bounced back in the primaries over his support for the Iraq War. The man, Michael Thurman, told Biden, 77, then: “Why we should vote for someone who voted for a war and enabled a war that killed thousands of our brothers and sister and countless Iraqi civilians?” Trump Jr posted the video of that incident on Twitter on Sunday and it was retweeted by the president.

Biden slammed Trump over cemetery incident

Biden himself has also sharply criticized the president over his alleged remarks insulting the martyrs in France. Recently, the former vice-president recalled his late son Beau Biden who was a military veteran and died of brain cancer in 2015 to say he “wasn’t a sucker”. “If these statements are true, the president should humbly apologize to every Gold Star mother and father and every Blue Star family that he's denigrated and insulted. Who the heck does he think he is?” Biden asked. Trump hasn’t apologized.

The president’s own position on the Iraq War has also been inconsistent. While he has claimed at times that he opposed the war from the beginning, he actually praised the invasion when it happened in March 2003. “It looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint,” he said, backing his indication made in September 2002 that he supported the war. However, only a couple of days later, he called the war “depressing” and “mess” and by 2004, his opposition to the war was well established.