Military veterans call for Trump's impeachment in Fourth of July video, say they feel 'deeply betrayed'
A group of military veterans released a video on July 4 calling for President Donald Trump's impeachment.
The video was released shortly after Trump insisted that the military leaders he wanted to be at his 4th of July celebrations were 'thrilled' to be attending the event.
Marine Corps vet Marie Delus, one of the several former service members who featured in the clip, said: "Not only is [Trump] cruel — I believe he’s also a criminal."
The video was reportedly created by the veterans group Common Defense along with Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer's organization called Need to Impeach.
Steyer has reportedly gathered over 8.2 million signatures on an online petition calling for the Congress to start Trump's impeachment proceedings.
The petition is largely based on special counsel Robert Mueller's report on purported Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.
“I served almost 15 years in the Army and I feel deeply betrayed," Army veteran Jose Vasquez stated in the video. “Our democracy is under attack, and we want to make sure that we protect it," he said.
Army veteran Perry O'Brien, in the video, said July 4 was about 'celebrating our independence from foreign powers.' “How can we do that when we have someone in the White House who actively conspired with a foreign adversary to get there?”
Marine Corps vet Alexander McCoy said in the clip that his work entailed protecting American embassies from foreign infiltration. "I never suspected our commander-in-chief would be colluding with a foreign dictator to undermine our democracy," he said.
Lead organizer of Common Defense and Marine Corps veteran Kyle Bibbly said he did not believe that the president was 'serious about our values... [or] serious about his job to serve the American people'.
Journalist Elliott Woods, who served in Iraq with the Virginia Army National Guard, on Thursday, slammed Trump for his fascination with outmoded military tanks in a world of sophisticated insurgencies and cyberwarfare.
Woods, in an op-ed for The New York Times titled 'Why Trump likes Tanks', said that Trump had "never been closer to warfare than has a child playing on the floor with toy tanks and green plastic army men.”
"Trump’s fondness for tanks is part of the insidious nostalgia that undergirds his entire ‘Make America Great Again’ ideology," Woods wrote.
"He has promised his followers that he can take them back to that time—and they seem ready to believe him," Woods wrote in her piece.