Trump calling military suckers and losers
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Executive summary
The allegation that Donald Trump called American service members who died in battle “suckers” and “losers” originates in a 2020 Atlantic report based on anonymous sources and has been repeated and debated since; some former aides publicly confirmed parts of the reporting while Trump has strongly denied it and independent fact‑checkers note there is no direct audio or on‑the‑record eyewitness documentation in the public record to conclusively prove the exact words [1] [2] [3].
1. What was reported: The Atlantic’s claim and the specifics
The Atlantic published an article in 2020 reporting that, during a 2018 trip to France and in other conversations, Trump privately referred to American war dead and wounded veterans as “losers” and “suckers,” declined to visit certain cemeteries and questioned why people would join the military if there was “nothing in it for them,” and those specific anecdotes — including a line about the Marines at Belleau Wood — are detailed in that magazine piece [1] [4].
2. Who backed the report: John Kelly and other senior figures
John Kelly, who served as White House chief of staff under Trump, publicly affirmed that Trump had disparaged service members and Gold Star families and described the president as viewing such people as “suckers” because “there is nothing in it for them,” a confirmation that media outlets such as NBC News and others reported when Kelly spoke out in 2024 [2].
3. Denials and evidentiary limits: Trump’s response and fact‑checking
Trump and his allies have repeatedly denied the quotes, with Trump vehemently denying he ever called fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” and multiple fact‑checking outlets — including Snopes and coverage in The New York Times — emphasize that the Atlantic piece relied on anonymous, second‑hand sources and that there is no public audio or contemporaneous on‑the‑record eyewitness testimony that independently corroborates the exact phrasing [3] [5].
4. How the claim has been used politically and in media
The story has been invoked repeatedly in campaign rhetoric and advertising — cited by opponents and allies of various candidates — and reappeared in 2023–2024 political debates and ads as a way to contrast presidential character on military respect; fact‑checkers note those uses amplify the claim but do not introduce new direct evidence of the original quotations [6] [7].
5. Assessing credibility: weighing corroboration against anonymity
The reporting rests on multiple anonymous sources and later public confirmations of the substance by a named former official (Kelly), which strengthens the claim’s plausibility, but journalistic standards and outlets that revisited the story uniformly acknowledge the absence of primary, independently verifiable proof such as on‑the‑record accounts or recordings that would eliminate reasonable doubt about exact language [1] [3] [5].
6. Bottom line: what can confidently be stated and what remains uncertain
It can be confidently stated that a major magazine reported that Trump disparaged fallen and wounded U.S. service members as “losers” and “suckers,” that a former chief of staff publicly confirmed that Trump privately disparaged service members, and that Trump denies the remarks; however, it remains a matter of public record that there is no publicly available first‑hand audio or contemporaneous on‑the‑record documentation that incontrovertibly proves he uttered those exact words as reported [1] [2] [3].