A recent NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll shows that “Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 19 points — 55 percent to 36 percent — among voters who are currently serving or have previously served in the U.S. military.”
That is despite Trump’s outrageous comments about former POW John McCain, despite his only-very-recently-found interest in veterans, his shenanigans surrounding fundraising for veterans, his support of torture, being OK with killing innocent family members of enemy combatants, despite his claims that he knows more than the generals, despite his astounding ignorance about the military, national security, NATO, the nuclear deterrent and matters of war and peace and despite his scorn for Gold Star parents — among many, many other things.
The poll was conducted before the “Commander-in-Chief” forum on Wednesday.
The poll included 3,358 who have previously served or are currently serving in the U.S. military, but did not include the author, a retired military officer.
Not that the author’s response would have made one iota of difference.
However, had the poll been conducted after Wednesday’s forum, it might have shown different numbers. I emphasize, “might” because nothing is certain in these elections anymore.
Why do I say that?
I will let a veteran who was there — both at the forum and in the United States Army — explain, as she did in an Op-Ed at the New York Times today, “What Trump Doesn’t Understand About the Military.”
Sue Fulton, a member of the class of 1980 at West Point — the first class that admitted women — and who served in the Army for five years asked Trump a question about whether undocumented immigrants who wanted to serve in the military should be allowed to do so.
Her question was in light of Trump’s announced policy on deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Fulton:
He said they could stay in that circumstance. I agree with him there, but I don’t understand how that fits with his previous statements. Which is true?
This is probably the kindest, benefit-of-the-doubt comment Fulton makes about Trump’s performance during the forum, a forum she went to “with an open mind, interested to hear how Mr. Trump would speak directly to his military supporters, and to see his grasp of the issues that affect us all.”
This is her overall impression:
But, in the crowd of veterans at the forum, I, and those around me, were startled more than once by Donald J. Trump’s lack of understanding of how his comments would be heard by us. In his allotted 30 minutes, he made several statements that reflected a lack of knowledge of how the military works, or appeared to argue for action that would be a violation of the armed services’ values.
More specifically, on sexual assault in the military, Fulton, who in the 1990s worked on ending the ban on service by gay Americans and, a decade later, worked to get the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy repealed, says:
[Trump] commented that a military court system to handle such cases “practically doesn’t exist,” which is baffling. The Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the Army alone constitutes one of the world’s largest law firms.
And then, “given an opportunity to explain a 2013 tweet — ‘26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military — only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men and women together?’ “Fulton says, “[Trump] doubled down”:
“It is a correct tweet,” he said. “There are many people that think that’s absolutely correct.”
If he was banking on an innate resentment of female soldiers by their male peers, he was discounting not only the female veterans in the room, but the men who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside them, who bristled at his comment.
But worse, Fulton says, after criticizing Trump on not knowing the most recent –yet still tragic — suicide statistics among veterans, “were those comments that fly in the face of our core values.”
Fulmer is referring to Trump’s continued nonsense about taking Iraq’s oil. “You cannot underestimate the importance of honor, of virtuous conduct, among military people,” she says, “This is called plunder. Stealing the national resources of another sovereign country is effectively a war crime.”
Fulton’s reserves her strongest criticism for Trump’s repeated attacks on our military leaders, more specifically on the core values of civil-military leadership, which, Fulton says, “runs both ways” as in respecting “the expertise of military leaders who are expected to give their best objective advice based on years of experience.”
As in a commander in chief’s not en-masse firing our generals and “[replacing] them with whom? Generals who fit his political viewpoint, like the 88 retired generals and admirals who recently endorsed him?”
Fulton:
The biggest jaw-dropper in Mr. Trump’s comments was his insult to today’s military. One thing that all of us who served before 2001 know: Troops from the most recent generation have deployed more, and been at war far longer, than any of us. We know that today’s generals are more seasoned, more experienced, than ever. They’ve spent the past 15 years commanding troops in combat.
For Mr. Trump to stand in front of a group of veterans and say, “The generals have been reduced to rubble” and “Right now, we are not strong,” was a slap in the face. We don’t care if you say that you “love the vets.” Do not expect us to nod our heads at this denigration of our service and our profession.
Fulton concludes, “Of all the Army values Mr. Trump has flouted in this campaign — respect, selfless service, personal courage — perhaps the most telling is loyalty.”
Sue Fulton served in the United States Army from 1980 to 1985 and is the former president of Sparta, an advocacy group for gay and transgender troops
Lead photo: DoD
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.