Which named former officials have publicly confirmed Trump called veterans 'suckers' or 'losers' and what did each say?
Executive summary
Two decades of reporting and a high-profile 2020 Atlantic piece sparked claims that former President Donald Trump called fallen U.S. service members “suckers” and “losers,” and the clearest named confirmation from a former official came from retired Marine Corps General and Trump’s one-time White House chief of staff John F. Kelly, who publicly affirmed portions of the reporting [1] [2]. Other public confirmations cited by major outlets rely on anonymous Pentagon and Marine sources or journalists who say they corroborated parts of the story, while Trump and his allies have consistently denied the allegations [3] [4].
1. John Kelly: the most prominent named former official who confirmed the remarks
John Kelly, who served 17 months as White House chief of staff under Trump, issued a statement to CNN confirming that Trump did not want to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because it was “filled with ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’” and Kelly reiterated other incidents detailed in The Atlantic’s reporting [1] [2]. Kelly’s standing as Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff and as a retired Marine whose son was killed in action gave his statement unusual weight, and outlets including Axios and Once A Soldier reported and summarized Kelly’s confirmation in the context of the original Atlantic allegations [1] [2].
2. Anonymous Pentagon and Marine sources: corroboration without names
Beyond Kelly’s public statement, reporting by The Associated Press and other outlets cited a senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer who confirmed aspects of the 2018 cemetery conversation to reporters—but those sources spoke on background and were not named publicly [3] [5]. Fact-checkers and news summaries have repeatedly noted these anonymous confirmations as corroboration of specific scenes in The Atlantic’s reporting while also pointing out the limits of anonymous sourcing for proving direct quotes [5] [4].
3. Journalists who say they corroborated elements
Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin has been reported as having confirmed parts of The Atlantic’s original account, including the refusal to visit the Aisne-Marne cemetery, according to coverage summarizing multiple newsroom confirmations [1]. Independent fact-checkers like Snopes and legacy outlets have recounted those journalistic confirmations while distinguishing between named firsthand corroboration and accounts attributed to unnamed officials [5] [4].
4. Denials, political responses, and partisan framing
Trump and his allies have repeatedly and categorically denied the allegations—Trump called the Atlantic story “totally false” and his campaign has marshaled multiple denials and counterclaims that many people disputed the story [3] [4]. Congressional Republicans and Trump supporters have pushed back on the reporting, while Democratic lawmakers, veterans groups and some foreign leaders reacted angrily to the underlying claims, illustrating how the allegation became a political flashpoint beyond the initial reporting [6] [7].
5. What the record supports and the limits of available named confirmations
The publicly named former official who has explicitly affirmed that Trump used terms like “suckers” and “losers” regarding U.S. war dead is John Kelly; other corroborations cited in major reporting come from unnamed Defense and Marine officials or from journalists who say they verified aspects of the story [1] [3] [5]. Public records and contemporaneous White House explanations at the time—such as blaming weather for the canceled cemetery visit—remain part of the official record, and major fact-checkers caution that, aside from Kelly and reporting based on anonymous sources, there is no trove of identifiable, on-the-record senior officials who independently repeated the exact phrasing in public [4] [3].