“With my own barehands, which are sizable.”
By Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
Donald Trump has a long history of trashing the sacrifices of members of the military and their families and boldly suggesting he would’ve done a better job if plopped down in their place, despite four service deferments and an alleged bone spur in his foot having precluded him from ever actually serving. In 2015, after Senator John McCain criticized Trump’s description of Mexicans as “rapists” and said he “fired up the crazies,” the then-presidential candidate told supporters that McCain wasn‘t actually a war hero, and that he, Trump, “like[s] people that weren‘t captured.” (McCain famously spent five-and-half years—two in solitary confinement—in a North Vietnamese prison, where he was repeatedly tortured, while Trump was working for his father and being sued for racial discrimination.) In 2016, Trump criticized a Gold Star family for speaking out against his divisive rhetoric about Muslims, telling the father of a slain solider that he’s made tons of similar “sacrifices,” such as “work[ing] hard” at his tax-avoiding empire. But on Sunday night, he truly outdid himself.
In an interview with Chris Wallace for Fox News Sunday, the president went after retired Adm. William H. McRaven, who oversaw the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Osama bin Laden during his near-40 years in the U.S. military. Questioning Trump’s attacks on the press, Wallace brought up McRaven, who wrote in an op-ed this summer that the president’s description of the media as the “enemy of the people” was the greatest threat to American democracy he had ever witnessed. At the first mention of the retired Navy SEAL and Special Operations commander, Trump immediately blurted out, in some kind of Pavlovian response, “Hillary Clinton fan,” and later described McRaven as an “Obama backer.” Then, when reminded of McRaven‘s accomplishments when it came to Hussein and bin Laden, President Bone Spurs threw out this:
“Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama Bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice? You know, living—think of this—living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan in what I guess they considered a nice mansion, I don’t know, I’ve seen nicer. But living in Pakistan right next to the military academy, everybody in Pakistan knew he was there.
“You’re not even going to give them credit . . . for taking down bin Laden?” Wallace asked. To which the answer was, apparently: not really!
“They took him down but—look, look, there’s news right there, he lived in Pakistan, we’re supporting Pakistan, we’re giving them $1.3 billion a year, which we don’t give them anymore, by the way, I ended it because they don’t do anything for us, they don’t do a damn thing for us.”
In a statement provided to CNN, McRaven, who is suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, said that he actually didn’t back anyone in the 2016 presidential election, and that he was a fan of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both of whom he worked for. As for the notion that he should’ve caught bin Laden sooner . . .
But we’re sure President Big Macs would’ve gotten the job done in half the time.
More Great Stories from Vanity Fair
— After the midterms, Democrats are finally preparing for war
— Bill Browder—Putin’s public enemy No. 1—on his Russia investigation and running for his life
— Of course: evidence emerges that Trump was less than truthful about all that hush money
— The thing that killed Vine is what made it great
— Silicon Valley is watching: will Nancy Pelosi take on Facebook?
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.
