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Pete Buttigieg slams Trump for 'disrespecting military', Internet calls him 'smartest candidate for president'

Pete Buttigieg said in an interview, 'The bottom line is the president thinks people who play by the rules, people who sacrifice for others, are suckers'

The bombshell report by The Atlantic, which alleges that President Donald Trump did not think it was important to honor the American war dead, according to four sources, remains a hot topic of discussion in the news and social media. 

Since the report was published on September 3, which also alleges that the POTUS called more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed, has been widely shared and also confirmed by Associated Press and The Washington Post. Even Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger slammed Trump, without directly naming him, in a long Twitter thread.

Fox News correspondent John Roberts on September 4 said on-air, as per Daily Beast, that two anonymous sources have denied The Atlantic report, saying “the president never said that according to both of these sources.” However, Jennifer Griffin, a national security correspondent for Fox News, in a long Twitter thread, confirmed that former Trump administration officials confirmed the president's remarks to her.

She wrote on Twitter: “Two former Sr Trump admin officials confirm .@JeffreyGoldberg reporting that President Trump disparaged veterans and did not want to drive to honor American war dead at Aisne-Marne Cemetery outside Paris.” She continued, “According to one former senior Trump administration official: “When the President spoke about the Vietnam War, he said, 'It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker'.” Griffin also wrote, “This former official heard the President say about American veterans: 'What's in it for them? They don't make any money.' Source: 'It was a character flaw of the President. He could not understand why someone would die for their country, not worth it.'”

Later, former presidential candidate and military veteran Pete Buttigieg was invited on Fox News’ program ‘The Story’, hosted by Jon Scott. The host referred to his earlier tweet about the article in the news. Buttigieg had shared The Atlantic article and said, “There are no words for how disgusting and dishonorable this is.”

When the host asked him how does he know these claims are true. Buttigieg promptly said, “Oh! That’s easy.” He said, “We watched him refer to prisoners of war like John McCain as ‘losers’ with our own eye.” The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, further told viewers that “here’s how Donald Trump is willing to insult your intelligence” and he explained that even though Trump denied calling McCain a “loser,” a simple Google search one will see a video and a tweet of Trump’s statement. 

He continued, “I am looking at the internet right now, and Fox News itself confirmed many of the details of this [The Atlantic] story. The bottom line is the president thinks people who play by the rules, people who sacrifice for others, are suckers.” Scott noted that some current and former Trump aides, such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, deny that the claims made by the widely shared article. Buttigieg replied, “Multiple sources confirmed. Multiple news organizations confirmed this. But if you don’t want to believe that, believe your own eyes. This president has been disrespecting the military from the day he let some ‘sucker’ – in his view – go in his place to serve in Vietnam because he didn’t want to.”

As reported by Snopes.com, in a June 2019 interview with British journalist Piers Morgan on ‘Good Morning Britain’, Trump was asked whether he wished he had served in Vietnam. And POTUS’ reply to that was, “Well, I was never a fan of that war, I’ll be honest with you. I thought it was a terrible war. I thought it was very far away. Nobody ever, you know you’re talking about Vietnam, and at that time, nobody had ever heard of the country.” He added that it would have been his “honor” to enlist in the armed forces but also said he had made up for it by increasing the US military’s spending budget while in office.

According to a 2019 Military Times report, Trump received five deferments during the Vietnam War -- four for education and one was a medical waiver for bone spurs in his feet. However, POTUS’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, had testified before Congress in February 2019 that the injury was made up so Trump could avoid the draft. Cohen’s statement was published in a CNBC report which quotes him as saying, “Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery. He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment. He finished the conversation with the following comment. ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam’.”

Meanwhile, during the Fox News interview, Scott suggested, after reading a quote from Sanders and Hogan Gidley, that it was a “he-said-she-said” scenario and claimed that Democrats are seizing upon it. Buttigieg said, “I mean, look, the president today lied on Twitter about never calling John McCain a loser. Now he’s asking us to believe that, OK, he’s lying about that today, because we can check and see the footage, but he’s not lying about the other stuff? He must think we’re all suckers, and the amazing thing to me is how little respect he has for the intelligence of his own supporters.”

Soon these interview clips were being shared on Twitter and people were lauding Buttigieg. One user said, “I believe someday Mayor Pete will be President@PeteButtigieg #TrumpIsALoser #TrumpHatesVeterans.”

Another user said, “Mayor Pete is the smartest candidate for president in a long time - loved this!”

A user shared, “This interview is so good! Great work Mayor Pete. I really hope you are president some day.”

Another user wrote: “Man, I would have loved to have seen Mayor Pete on the stage opposite Trump. Donated money to his campaign & will never regret doing so. Fox News will probably never have him back on love the way he nailed this interview.”

One commented, “I hope that President Biden selects Mayor Pete to be his Secretary of State.”