Trump’s appeal to some veterans is particularly puzzling

Editor:

As I was driving along the other day, I was passed by a car with a “Veteran for Trump” sticker displayed on the bumper.  Even casual observers of both past and present political campaigns are (or should be) well aware of the ex-president’s overwhelmingly negative opinions of women, people of color, the disabled, LGBTQ+ members, and the military.

By word and action, he continues to disparage our armed services members, both past and present.  He reportedly called war dead veterans “losers” and “suckers.”

He said of the late Republican Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War: “He’s not a war hero, he was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Trump asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades because “it doesn’t look good for me,” and while visiting Arlington National Cemetery with retired Marine Corps General (and future White House chief of staff) John Kelly on Memorial Day in 2017, Trump said “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Gen. Kelly’s son perished in Afghanistan in 2010 and is buried there! Knowing all this (additional examples abound), I can’t imagine anything a military person (or any person, for that matter) could say to justify his/her continued support of this candidate. Have we not learned anything?

For years now, I have tried, and tried, and tried to understand the appeal of this guy, and, failing that, have yet to hear even one person logically explain their fascination with him.  In the end, I do agree with Trump when he said “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

How sad, America . . . how sad.

Robert C. Frost

Barker (formerly of Lyndonville)