Steve Schmidt: Rain Man: Trump stays dry while Gold Star families get soaked

[FakeNoose]

Link: https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/rain-man-trump-stays-dry-while-gold

Donald Trump stood beneath shelter on Memorial Day, while Gold Star families sat exposed in the rain. It was the perfect metaphor for this vulgar and degraded age in American life. The commander in chief was dry. The families who carried the unbearable burden of sacrifice were soaked. The image captured the truth of Trumpism better than any poll, speech or slogan ever could.

Abraham Lincoln described the war dead as those who gave “the last full measure of devotion.” Donald Trump has spent his political life mocking devotion, degrading sacrifice and insulting honor. He mocked John McCain for being captured. He called dead Americans “losers” and “suckers.” He turned Arlington into a campaign backdrop. He transformed Memorial Day into another spectacle centered on himself, his grievances and his vanity.

Heather Delaney Reese [link below] captured the obscenity perfectly in her account of the ceremony. The President of the United States couldn’t even summon the minimum level of restraint, dignity or empathy required by the occasion. The performance was grotesque because grotesquerie is all Trump understands. Everything becomes theater. Everything becomes self-glorification. Everything becomes smaller, uglier and cheaper in his presence.

It was a weekend of humiliation for the country.

Pete Hegseth’s commencement speech at West Point felt less like an address to future officers than a parody written by the writers of “Veep.” It was as though Jonah Ryan had stumbled into the office of Secretary of Defense after suffering a catastrophic head injury. The speech was shallow, unserious and unworthy of the institution he addressed....

- more at link -

Please read the rest on Steve Schmidt's The Warning.

Link to Heather Delaney Reese article: https://open.substack.com/users/135515462-heather-delaney-reese
https://substack.com/home/post/p-199287944
"The President couldn't control himself even for a day"

[mwmisses4289]

1. Why do folks keep expecting this t dude to have any kind of dignity or decorum?

Or to turn any appearance into anything that isn't about him? Geez, if people have been paying attention to this idgit for the last 40 or more years, that's all he does.

[FakeNoose]

2. Maybe they were hoping Chump wouldn't even show up for the ceremony?

If I were a Gold Star mother, that would be my greatest wish.

[popsdenver]

8. Maybe, the only reason

he showed up, was it was raining, and he couldn't mock the military by going to play golf????????

There should have been ten thousand protesters, each with a sign.......TRUMP......"SUCKERS AND LOSERS"???????

[Hey Joe]

9. Exactly!

Some of us remember him from the late 80’s and he was despised way back then. He’s only gotten much worse in his decrepitude .

[AverageOldGuy]

3. Nothing is too good for Gold Star families.

So that's what they get. Nothing.

[sop]

4. "So much of the instability, the public health crises, the economic chaos, and the growing sense that everything

is coming apart at the seams can be traced back to this administration and the people enabling it...The entire world is being forced to live at the mercy of a madman." - Heather Delaney Reese

[BattleRow]

14. At the mercy of the merciless.

[dedl67]

5. Nothing new: Recall Trump's attack on Gold Star Parents Khizr and Gazala Khan,

whose son died in Iraq. That was back in 2016.

[Orrex]

6. And veterans still support him in large numbers

[dave99]

7. No

[Orrex]

12. YMMV

61% of vets went for Fuckface47 in 2024, and I've seen little to suggest that they've abandoned him in large number since then.

[johnnyfins]

10. No offense to the families, but the last place

I would be is at an event that included this disgraceful president.

[SergeStorms]

11. The Gold Star families....

were willing to sacrifice their comfort and dignity, not to mention their loved ones, so the five-strand, two-foot-long, presidential bouffant wasn't plastered to his bald head.
That would be a sacrifice Agent Orange couldn't bear.

[Rob H.]

13. That entire article is excellent

These paragraphs really stood out (emphases added by me):

That was his morning. Attacks, then a fake tribute, then more complaining. The men and women who died for this country got one sentence squeezed between insults, like he suddenly remembered he was supposed to mention them.

At least he is not completely hiding how he really feels. It is just heartbreaking to watch a president treat this day with such little respect. Because nobody made him spend Memorial Day morning attacking people online. Nobody made him turn even this day into another performance about himself. Those were his instincts. Those were his priorities. And it is just another reminder of how far our country continues to fall.

And it should tell us something else, too, about where his energy actually goes. He was awake before dawn, sharp enough to craft insults, to track which senators had wronged him, to brag. But by the time he reached the part of the day that was supposed to be about someone other than himself, there was nothing left in him.

During the remarks portion of today’s event, while Secretary Hegseth was speaking, the President fell asleep. Or as his handlers like to spin it, he took a long blink. What we saw was him sitting with his eyes closed, motionless, for an extended stretch, caught on the livestream for everyone to see. We have heard for a long time now that he sleeps only a few hours a night and is up posting at all hours. He has all the energy in the world for grievance at 6 a.m. and none of it for the fallen at noon. Awake for the cruelty. Asleep for the cost. That is not a scheduling problem. That is a window into what he values and what he does not.

[BattleRow]

15. An the First Lady was nowhere to be seen.

Or did I blink and miss it?

[Grammy23]

16. Of course she was not there.

No one thought to include that event in her contract. 😔