Did Trump call WWII soldiers suckers & losers
Executive summary
Reporting beginning with a 2020 Atlantic story alleges that then-President Donald Trump privately called American war dead “losers” and “suckers,” primarily in reference to a canceled 2018 visit to the Aisne‑Marne American Cemetery near Paris and to Marines who died at Belleau Wood, but the claims rest on anonymous, second‑hand sources, have been both corroborated and disputed by different figures, and lack publicly available audio or contemporaneous documentary proof [1] [2] [3].
1. What the reporting actually says — the Atlantic account and its specifics
The core allegation first published by The Atlantic states that during a 2018 trip to France President Trump declined to visit the Aisne‑Marne cemetery because “it’s filled with losers,” and in a separate exchange called the roughly 1,800 Marines killed at Belleau Wood “suckers” for getting killed, language attributed to anonymous senior staffers and described in detail by multiple outlets that picked up the story [1] [4] [5].
2. Corroboration from officials, and who confirmed what
After the Atlantic piece, several officials and former aides publicly backed parts of the account: a senior Defense Department official and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer told the Associated Press they could confirm the 2018 cemetery comments, and former White House chief of staff John Kelly later said Trump “did” refer to the cemetery as being “filled with suckers and losers,” creating additional public corroboration beyond the original anonymous sources [1] [6] [7].
3. Denials, lack of direct evidence, and independent fact‑checking
Trump and his allies have consistently denied making the remarks, calling the reporting false or politically motivated, and independent fact‑checks and reporting outfits have noted there is no audio, video, or contemporaneous written record publicly available to definitively prove the words were spoken, meaning the claim cannot be proven beyond dispute from the sources made public [2] [3] [8].
4. Which wars and veterans are referenced — WWI vs. WWII confusion
Most major accounts tie the alleged “losers”/“suckers” language to American dead buried at the Aisne‑Marne cemetery and to Belleau Wood — both World War I sites — while other reporting mentions comments about individual figures from later wars (for example, reporting attributed a separate insult to George H.W. Bush’s WWII service and long‑standing criticisms of John McCain), which has led some summaries to conflate World War I cemetery remarks with broader attacks on veterans from other wars [1] [5] [4].
5. Why the story stuck: political context and competing agendas
The allegations gained traction because they dovetailed with a pattern of reported anti‑veteran remarks and because opponents had clear political incentives to amplify them; conversely, Trump’s defenders have an equal incentive to cast the story as fabricated or sourced to hostile media, leaving interpretation contingent on readers’ trust in anonymous sourcing and named corroborators like John Kelly [8] [9] [6].
6. Bottom line answer to the question asked
Did Trump call World War II soldiers “suckers” and “losers”? The most widely reported specific cemetery and Belleau Wood allegations in 2020 concern World War I dead, not World War II, and multiple reputable outlets say Trump was reported to have used “suckers” and “losers” language [1] [4] [5]. However, while several former officials corroborated portions of the Atlantic account and John Kelly explicitly stated Trump made such remarks, there is no publicly released audio or contemporaneous written record that incontrovertibly proves he said those exact words, and Trump emphatically denies making them [6] [3] [2]. Therefore, reporting supports that he was alleged to have done so (mainly about WWI dead), the allegation has credible corroboration from some insiders, but it remains disputed and not proven beyond any possible doubt in the public record [1] [3] [6].