Did any Trump officials confirm or deny the suckers and losers quotes in 2020?

1. Trump’s immediate, unequivocal denials

President Trump forcefully denied the Atlantic story when it surfaced in September 2020, telling reporters he would "swear on anything" that he never said those words about fallen heroes, a denial documented by Snopes and contemporaneous coverage ^{[1] [2]}. The White House blamed weather for the canceled cemetery visit cited in the Atlantic piece, an explanation reported alongside those denials ^{[1] [3]}. Those public denials were the administration’s first line of response and became a central part of the narrative contest over whether the alleged comments were real ^[1].

2. Public denials by senior officials, including Pompeo

Then–Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly disputed the reporting in 2020, saying he did not hear Trump use the words described in The Atlantic and that he had been with the president for much of that trip, an on-the-record denial reported by fact-checkers ^{[1] [2]}. Those denials were cited repeatedly by allies and surrogates to contest the Atlantic’s account and to argue the story relied on unreliable anonymous sourcing ^[1].

3. Contradictory confirmations from former and anonymous officials

At the same time, several current and former administration officials — often speaking anonymously or off the record to The Atlantic and other outlets — said Trump did make the disparaging comments, and some later named or on-the-record sources corroborated parts of the story; journalists including Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that former officials had confirmed aspects of the Atlantic report to her ^{[4] [5]}. Media outlets such as the Associated Press and others also reported that at least one senior Defense Department official and other staff relayed versions of the remarks, creating a sharp split between public denials and private confirmations ^{[6] [5]}.

4. The evidentiary gap and how fact-checkers framed the dispute

Independent fact-checkers and subsequent reporting repeatedly stressed a crucial limitation: there has been no audio, video, transcript or contemporaneous presidential note produced to independently verify the precise language alleged, and much of the corroboration relied on anonymous sourcing or later recollections, which left the claim unverifiable to standards some outlets require ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Snopes and other evaluators therefore concluded they could not definitively say the quotes were true or false based on the public record available in 2024–2025 ^{[1] [3]}.

5. Later developments and retrospective corroboration by a former chief of staff

After 2020, the debate persisted in public discourse; in 2023 and 2024 some figures who had been inside the administration offered retrospective confirmations. John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, said in statements and interviews that Trump did use those words, a later corroboration reported in 2023–2024 that bolstered the Atlantic account for some observers ^[7]. Even with such confirmations, reporting continued to treat the evidence as a mix of on-the-record denials, anonymous corroboration, and later reminiscences rather than incontrovertible contemporaneous recordings ^{[7] [3]}.

Conclusion: a split record driven by denials, anonymous corroboration, and no recording

The factual record in 2020 shows clear, public denials from Trump and senior aides such as Pompeo and an equally clear set of corroborations from other officials, some anonymous and some later speaking on the record; independent fact-checkers emphasized the lack of audio or documentary proof, leaving the allegation contested rather than definitively proven or disproven in contemporaneous reporting ^{[1] [4] [3]}. Readers should weigh the authoritative, on-the-record denials against anonymous and retrospective corroborations while recognizing journalists’ repeated caveat about the absence of direct recordings or contemporaneous documentation ^{[1] [2] [3]}.