Opinion: Republicans Claim They’d Stand Up to Terrorists But They Can’t Even Stand Up to Trump

The leader of the Republican Party mocks US military and no one in that party can find the courage to meaningfully object. The same people act like they’d stand up to terrorists; but they can’t even stand up to their own leader.

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Moments after the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, the U.S. was overrun by Republicans fighting their way to the top of the heap by attacking… the U.S. President.

They lied about money being sent to Iran funding the attack, they called Biden weak, they suggested only they could stand up to terrorists and scare them into not being terrorists. This was admittedly an odd statement for a party run by someone who incited an act of domestic terrorism against the U.S., but facts don’t much matter these days to the Republican Party. They shook their strongman rattles on Fox, Newsmax and Twitter/X.

On Monday, their party leader former president Donald Trump attacked the U.S. military, again, while speaking to supporters in Iowa in a livestock building in front of bales of hay. And once again, not a one of these courageous strongman types found the spine to say that Trump is a coward who should not lead their party, does not speak for them, and should not speak for them or run for president.

Here he is in all of his glory, attacking U.S. military leadership as “some of the dumbest people” he’s ever met:

There are actually logistical reasons why the military will leave equipment behind, including that it can be cheaper, it’s been “demilitarized,” and perhaps the cynical among us might think it could be beneficial to private contractors, but since Trump leads the party that acts as if only the private sector is capable of efficiency, this wouldn’t be acknowledged anyway.

After Trump followed the attack on Israel by praising Hezbollah, self-imagined strongman Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who makes a name for himself by picking fights with Mickey Mouse, wrote on X, “It is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah.

That is the strongest attack DeSantis could muster after Trump had done things like… suggesting outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley deserved to be executed.

In late September, Trump wrote that Milley deserved to have been executed due to news reports that he had spoken with Chinese counterparts to assure them that the U.S. was not under threat after Trump incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

After this outburst, Fox News tried to claim that there was a “major outcry” from his Republican rivals. Like Mike Pence saying there is no call for that kind of language, sounding like a nursery school teacher chastising a child who cursed, rather than a man who was threatened with being hanged by Trump’s supporters and had to flee said attack. This historical fact means Pence is fully aware of the impact of Trump’s “language.”

Asa Hutchinson found the massive courage to use words like “inexcusable and dangerous,” while Chris Christie called Trump an “absolute child.” Wow. Do you feel the strongman power that will scare terrorists into not being terrorists?

No? Maybe you’re focused on what they didn’t say. No one said that Trump should not be their party leader, that he should not be holding rallies or even booked on TV to dispense such rhetoric in their name. No one said he should be in jail for 1/6 or for allegedly stealing classified documents and leaving boxes of them scattered around his bathrooms and ballrooms at his club.

No one.

This lack of courage from the party that claims it is the party of power and sells itself as “strongman” types is hardly new.

Trump’s former Chief of Staff Kelly confirmed that Trump “insulted vets in private,” the Federal Times wrote. “Kelly — a former Marine Corps general who also served as Trump’s Homeland Security secretary — expressed disgust for the former commander-in-chief’s past actions and recent comments attacking outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.”

Kelly “also said that Trump did not want to be photographed in public with military amputees, with the former president reportedly saying, ‘it doesn’t look good for me.'”

“Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’,” The Atlantic wrote in 2020. “The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.”

More from Trump’s time as president when he refused to visit an American cemetery near Paris because it was raining and he felt his hair wouldn’t survive the weather and called the 1,800 marines who lost their lives “suckers” for being killed in war:

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Not new. Not at all. The same man who mocked a Gold Star family has been doing this his entire, gold-plated and cushioned life.

“Trump Has Mocked the U.S. Military His Whole Life,” Foreign Policy wrote in 2020. “Egged on by his father, the U.S. president began expressing contempt for Americans who fight in wars as far back as high school, his classmates say.”

More, stemming from the times Trump called American war heroes “losers” and “suckers”:

Perhaps no one was less surprised last week when it was reported that U.S. President Donald Trump had called American war dead “losers” and “suckers” than his former high school classmate George M. White.

The 74-year-old retired Army veteran was Trump’s superior—the first captain, or highest-ranking cadet—in Trump’s 1964 graduating class at the New York Military Academy. White said he witnessed up close Trump’s contempt for military service, discipline, and tradition, as well his ungoverned sense of entitlement, all helped along by his father Fred Trump’s generous donations to the school.

“No, those remarks absolutely didn’t surprise me. In my dealings with him he was a heartless, obnoxious son of a bitch,” White told me in an interview over the weekend.

General Milley displayed the actual courage we would expect from people who portray themselves as The Only Ones who can stand up to terrorists (even as President Biden actually walks the talk, is on his way to Israel today and has visited the war zone in Ukraine), saying, “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

The people who can’t stand up to soft, privileged, protected by bully lawyers Don Trump are supposed to adhere to the same spirit of an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, yet they act as if they have all taken an oath to Trump over the United States.

They are all complicit, as they are all operating under the umbrella of this man — long after they knew who he was. They all stand for his attacks on the military, his calls for executions, the 1/6 attack he incited and his alleged theft and sharing of stolen national secrets. They own all of these deeds.

Every single Republican rushing to use an attack on Israel to divide the U.S. even further by claiming they’d stand up to terrorists more than Biden is a lily-livered liar.

They can’t even stand up to Donald Trump.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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