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Biden slams Trump over alleged comments mocking US war dead

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event Sept. 4, 2020, in Wilmington, Delaware. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON
(AP) — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden declared President
Donald Trump “unfit” for the presidency on Friday, delivering an
impassioned reaction to a report that Trump — who never served in
uniform — allegedly mocked American war dead.

The president and his allies have dismissed the report in The Atlantic as false.

The
allegations, sourced anonymously, describe multiple offensive comments
by the president toward fallen and captured U.S. service members,
including calling World War I dead at an American military cemetery in
France “losers” and “suckers” in 2018.

The reported comments,
many of which were confirmed independently by The Associated Press, are
shining a fresh light on Trump’s previous public disparagement of
American troops and military families. That opens a new political
vulnerability for the president less than two months from Election Day.

Voice cracking, Biden told reporters that “you know in your gut” Trump’s comments, if true, are “deplorable.”

“I’ve
just never been as disappointed, in my whole career, with a leader that
I’ve worked with, president or otherwise,” Biden added. “If the article
is true — and it appears to be, based on other things he’s said — it is
absolutely damning. It is a disgrace.”

He added that “the president should humbly apologize to every Gold Star mother and father, to every Blue Star family that he’s denigrated. … Who the heck does he think he is?”

Trump, in the Oval Office, said no apology was necessary, because it was a “fake story.”

Trump
was alleged to have made the comments in November 2018, as he was set
to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery during a trip to France. The
White House said the visit was scrubbed because foggy weather made the
helicopter trip from Paris too risky and a 90-minute drive was deemed
infeasible.

Speaking Friday in the Oval Office, Trump denied ever
uttering such comments: “It was a terrible thing that somebody could
say the kind of things — and especially to me ’cause I’ve done more for
the military than almost anyone anybody else.”

Later, in a press
briefing, Trump suggested the source of the story was his former chief
of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly. “It could have been a guy like
John Kelly,” Trump told reporters, saying his former top aide “was
unable to handle the pressure of this job.”

Biden’s critique was
personal. The former vice president often speaks about his pride for his
late son Beau’s service in the Delaware Army National Guard. As he
spoke, Biden grew angry, raising his voice to rebut Trump’s alleged
comments that Marines who died in battle were “suckers” for getting
killed.

“When my son was an assistant U.S. attorney and he
volunteered to go to Kosovo when the war was going on, as a civilian, he
wasn’t a sucker,” Biden declared.

“When my son volunteered to
join the United States military as the attorney general, he went to Iraq
for a year, won the Bronze Star and other commendations, he wasn’t a
sucker!”

Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015.

Returning to Washington from a Thursday visit to Pennsylvania, Trump told reporters that the Atlantic report was “a disgraceful situation” by a “terrible magazine.”

“I
would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our
fallen heroes,” Trump told the reporters, gathered on the tarmac in the
dark. “There is nobody that respects them more. No animal — nobody —
what animal would say such a thing?”

Biden has framed the election
from the start as a referendum on Trump’s character. His allies quickly
seized on the reported comments in hopes they could drive a wedge
between military families and veterans and Trump. They also believe the
issue could help win over disaffected Republican voters who are fed up
with Trump’s constant controversies.

In particular, Biden’s team
believes his well-documented experience, both personally and
politically, with military issues could help him make inroads with a
population that broadly supported Trump in the 2016 election and could
help sway the election this year in a number of close swing states.
Biden himself has not served in the military.

Military families
were broadly supportive of Trump in the 2016 election, and a Pew
Research Center survey of veterans conducted in June 2019 found overall
that veterans were more supportive of Trump than the general public, and
that roughly 60% of the veterans polled identified as Republicans.

On
a call with reporters hosted by the Biden campaign Friday, Illinois
Sen. Tammy Duckworth lambasted Trump for “belittling the sacrifices of
those who have shown more bravery than he’s capable of.”

Duckworth,
a retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel who lost both of her
legs in the Iraq War, has been a prominent critic of Trump’s handling of
military issues. Knocking Trump for allegedly inventing an injury to
avoid serving in the Vietnam War, Duckworth said she’d “take my
wheelchair and my titanium legs over Donald Trump’s supposed bone spurs
any day.”

Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who drew national
attention after criticizing Trump during the 2016 Democratic National
Convention, joined Duckworth on the call and said Trump’s “life is a
testament to selfishness.”

“Words we say are windows into our
souls. So when Donald Trump calls anyone who places their lives in
service of others a loser, we understand Trump’s soul,” he said. Khan’s
son, Humayun, was killed in action in Iraq in 2004.

In 2016, Trump
responded to the criticism from Khan by claiming he’d made sacrifices
of his own and by making an Islamophobic attack on Khan’s wife, Ghazala
Khan, who was wearing a headscarf at the Democratic convention, saying:
“She had nothing to say. She probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have
anything to say. You tell me.”

Trump also denied calling the late
Arizona Sen. John McCain, a decorated Navy officer who was a prisoner
of war in Vietnam, a “loser” after his August 2018 death.

Trump
acknowledged Thursday he was “never a fan” of McCain and disagreed with
him, but said he still respected him and approved everything to do with
his “first-class triple-A funeral” without hesitation because “I felt he
deserved it.”

In 2015, shortly after launching his presidential
candidacy, Trump publicly blasted McCain, saying, “He’s not a war hero.”
He added, “I like people who weren’t captured.” At the time, Trump also
shared a news article on Twitter calling McCain a “loser.”

Trump
only amplified his criticism of McCain as the Arizona lawmaker grew
critical of his acerbic style of politics, culminating in a late-night
“no” vote scuttling Trump’s plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
That vote shattered what few partisan loyalties bound the two men, and
Trump has continued to attack McCain for that vote, even posthumously.

Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo told “Fox & Friends” on Friday that he was
with the president for a good part of the trip to France. “I never heard
him use the words that are described in that article,” Pompeo said.

Asked
Friday about the possibility of seeing Trump when they will both be in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks next week, Biden said: “I didn’t know he was going until after I
announced on my own. Of course.”

Asked if he’d be willing to share a stage with Trump, he said: “Yes. He’s still the president of the United States of America.”

AP writers James LaPorta and Jill Colvin contributed.