On April 17, 2024, U.S. President Biden delivered a speech at the United Steelworkers headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Elisabeth Franz | Reuters
US President Joe Biden choked up on Wednesday as he lashed out at Donald Trump, saying the Republican presidential nominee “doesn’t deserve to be my son’s commander in chief.”
Biden’s scathing comments referenced his late son, Beau Biden, who served as a major in the U.S. Army. Delaware Army National GuardTrump reportedly addressed dead U.S. service members in French cemetery When he was president, he was a “fool and a loser.”
The incumbent Democrat made the remarks while addressing members of the United Steelworkers union in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“But one thing I did today reminded me of something my opponent said not long ago in Paris,” Biden said.
“They asked him to visit American cemeteries. He said ‘no.’ He won’t do it because they are fools and losers,” Biden said, citing reports of Trump’s justification.
“I didn’t make this up. The staff who were with him today admitted it. A fool and a loser. That man didn’t deserve it,” Biden said, pausing for a few choked seconds before adding, “To be the commander.” Take charge for my son.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Biden’s statement.
Beau Biden served as Delaware Attorney General and served in the Attorney General’s Corps of the National Guard. He served a year in the National Guard, including a seven-month deployment to Iraq starting in 2008.
Beau Biden died in 2015, when his father was vice president in former President Barack Obama’s administration.
In October, Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed CNN Details of the 2020 article atlantic organization They included disparaging comments about members of the U.S. military.
The Atlantic article by Jeffrey Goldberg begins by describing then-President Trump’s cancellation of a 2018 visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside Paris, claiming that heavy rain prevented helicopters from flying over him , and the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there.
“Both statements are incorrect,” Goldberg wrote.
“Trump rejected the idea of a visit because he was worried about his hair getting matted in the rain and because he believed in honoring America’s war dead,” Goldberg wrote, according to four people briefed on the day’s discussions. it is not important.
The article recalled: “On the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said in a conversation with senior staff, ‘Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s full of losers.'”
“In another conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who died at Belleau Wood as ‘suckers’ for being killed.”
“Is there anything else I can add that hasn’t already been said?” Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, told CNN in October.
“One believes that those who wear uniforms to defend their country, are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or suffer years of torture as prisoners of war are ‘fools’ because ‘it doesn’t do them any good,'” Kelly said.
“A guy who doesn’t want to be in front of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good to me.'” A guy who openly disparaged Gold Star families (all Gold Star families) on TV during the 2016 campaign, ranting about how we most The precious heroes who gave their lives for the defense of the United States are “losers” and will not visit their graves in France.
In response to the article, a Trump spokesperson told CNN: “John Kelly is completely lying to himself with these debunked stories that he made up because he did not serve the president well during his tenure as chief of staff. .