Trump Calls Media ‘Dishonest and Disgusting’ For Failing to Back His Veteran Fundraising Lie

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:00 pm

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On Monday, as The Washington Post reports, “A dozen military veterans protested outside Trump Tower in New York City on Monday morning, accusing Donald Trump of using former soldiers as props for his presidential campaign.”

“We’re here as a group of veterans to reject Donald Trump,” said protest organizer Alexander McCoy, a 27-year-old former Marine. He said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee failed to follow through on a promise to raise and donate millions of dollars to veterans.

The Daily Beast, which posted this tweet of the demonstration…

…Complains that Monday’s demonstration “was a disjointed effort that squandered an opportunity to hold him accountable after months of obfuscation,” that it could have been better organized. Be that as it may, the charges themselves are undeniably true.

The origins of Trump’s veterans fundraising fiasco is well known:

We all know that Trump skipped a debate in January and said he was going to raise money for veterans instead. And he can hate on Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post all he wants, but he didn’t give $6 million to veterans, and he hasn’t explained why.

When Trump tweeted yesterday that “I will take care of our vets!” but apparently he means like a theater manager takes care of his props.

On the same day as the protest, in the fact-free zone of Donald Trump’s Twitter account, we see the repeated insistence that Trump is the biggest friend veterans have and that it’s the media that are the villains. First, the claim that he’s just a nice guy:

Followed by this tweet,

And then, the whine of the wannabe martyr,

Apparently, it is dishonest to refuse to participate in Donald Trump’s imaginary universe. Trump’s continued insistence that lies are truth isn’t anything new, of course. As FactCheck.org stated last December, “He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong…”

The funny thing is that Trump’s campaign has actually admitted less than $6 million was raised.

Trump Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski says it was closer to $4.5 million. That more was pledged that collected. The Washington Post did some digging and identified $3.1 million in donations, a little over half what was promised.

CNN found even less of the money in March, a list from the Trump campaign “showing 27 veterans organizations had received a total of $2.9 million to date.” Trump’s excuses since then have been, in essence, that “the check is in the mail.”

Even Fox News reported the ugly truth.

It strikes a discordant note when an adult acts like a child when he is caught in a lie, and just keeps insisting the lie is the truth, no matter how much evidence exists to the contrary. It’s not the amount that matters – raising money for veterans is a good thing – but don’t lie about how much you raised. Trump just insisted the amount including $1 of his own money but Lewandowsky has already admitted he didn’t know if that mythical million was counted as part of the $4.5.

Trump is right about one thing: the media is very often dishonest and disgusting, but no more so than Trump himself, who is telling a lie 9 out of every 10 times he opens his mouth. Trump is all about the grand gesture. He has yet to put his money where his mouth is, and bragging about giving to charity isn’t what giving to charity is all about, even assuming he actually gave any of his own money.

For Trump, this isn’t now and never was about veterans. It was about Trump being a big man and receiving well-deserved paeans of praise from literally everyone for being something he is not – selfless. And his self-martyrdom now proves this was never about veterans but about Donald Trump.

Veterans are right to feel like props in the reality star’s theater of the bizarre, because that’s all any person is in Trump’s universe. There can be only one luminary there, and that is Trump himself. The utility of all other objects – including veterans – is based on their ability to serve Trump, and they have no value beyond that.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.