Military Families Aren’t Pleased With The Glib Comments Trump Made About Fallen Soldiers

President Donald Trump made polarizing remarks on Wednesday as he traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for a dignified transfer ceremony honoring four U.S. service members killed during the ongoing conflict with Iran.

At the ceremony, Trump saluted the flag-draped transfer cases alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and met privately with the grieving families.

But before departing for Delaware aboard Air Force One, Trump defended the controversial military operation in Iran, saying all four of the fallen service members had fully supported it.

“They are indeed great heroes, actually,” Trump told reporters. “They said, and they, all of them said very strongly, ’We can’t let, cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

The conflict has claimed the lives of 18 U.S. service members and cost taxpayers at least $37.5 billion so far.

The remains included two U.S. Army soldiers who were killed in Iranian missile and drone attacks in Jordan last week. They have been identified as Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas.

A third service member killed in the airstrike, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York, was identified earlier this week. The fourth soldier honored, Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30, of Spring Lake, North Carolina, was killed on Sunday during a controlled detonation at a military base in Iraq, the Pentagon said.

When questioned what he would say to the families of the soldiers killed in conflict with Iran, the president emphasized a message of “love.”

“All I’m going to say is, we love you. We love your child, and that’s what they are to them. They’re their children. There’s no games, no nothing. That’s their child. And all you can do is throw out your heart,” Trump said before boarding Air Force One for the dignified transfer ceremony.

Trump’s politicalized remarks ahead of the ceremony at Dover struck a nerve with some Gold Star families ― a title given to those who’ve lost loved ones in the course of military operations or campaigns.

“It’s crystal clear to me that this is a disgraceful political stunt ahead of a major election,” said Karie Fugett, the widow of Corporal Jimmy Cleveland II of the Marine Corps, who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and died at 25 after suffering for four years from a war wound.

A recent Politico poll showed that most Americans, including a significant portion of MAGA supporters, believe the Iran war has not been worth the economic cost.

“The president knows his war with Iran is the most unpopular war in modern history, and he’s terrified of how that will show up at the ballot box,” Fugget said. “It’s foul.”

Trump “is the one who chose to throw them into this unnecessary conflict in the first place,” Fugget said, “and now he’s putting words into the mouths of fallen service members in an attempt to fool Americans into believing they believed in, and were even willing to sacrifice their lives for, the war he started and has since lost control of.”

Kelly McHugh-Stewart, the daughter of U.S. Army Colonel John M. McHugh who was killed in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2010, said she wasn’t surprised by the president’s remarks, noting that it isn’t the first dignified transfer Trump has capitalized on for his own personal or political gain.

“As the president of the United States, he can do a lot more than ’throw his heart out,” she said. “Perhaps start with ending this illegal war in Iran, a war with no clear mission, end goal, or timeline, a war costing billions of dollars that still has not been approved by Congress.”

Trump’s divisive comments Wednesday came days after he shared a social media post in which he compared the number of Americans killed in the Iran war so far with the death tolls from previous U.S. conflicts — a comparison critics said appeared to downplay the fatalities in the current war.

“18 lives is 18 lives too many,” McHugh-Stewart told HuffPost. “How many more military families will have to suffer because of the actions of this president?

“I know firsthand the repercussions of losing a parent to a war that is confusing, divisive, and drags on for far too long, and it’s not something I want any other military child to endure,” she added.

Rivka Bent, the mother of Lance Corporal Cole M. Bent, who served during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan, said she’s used to politicians on both sides of the aisle politicizing the deaths of service members.

“I think families of those in the military understand first and foremost the underlying agreement that exists between their enlisted and themselves: The agreement being, death in service is part of the job,” she said.

“But honestly, the presence and words from the high-ranking official stands as more protocol than anything else,” she said. “All of us would rather have our sons or daughters safely returned to us and no amount of praise or political rhetoric can replace that.”

As for President Trump’s recent remarks, “whether I like Trump or not, he is correct when he recognizes that the fallen military, to us, are simply our child.”

Wednesday’s ceremony was the third dignified transfer Trump has attended since the start of the Iran war. At an event later Wednesday in Marietta, Georgia, Trump introduced the family of 1st Lt. Tyler J. Feehan, one of those killed in Iranian attacks, who’d traveled with Trump from Dover on Air Force One.

While the president has frequently praised the military, Fugett said his record of comments about fallen service members makes it hard to view this latest episode in isolation. In 2016, several Gold Star families and veterans organizations condemned Trump’s remarks about the Khan family after they spoke at the Democratic National Convention about their son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq.

Trump said that Khan’s mother, Ghazala, was “not allowed” to speak at the DNC because of her Muslim religion, and suggested that his business career involved sacrifices on par with sacrifices of fallen service members.

When an adviser warned Trump, then the GOP candidate for president, that he had just attacked a Gold Star family, Trump reportedly responded, “What’s that?”

Since taking office, some Gold Star families have said Trump called or wrote to them after the deaths of their loved ones. But an Associated Press investigation in 2017 found that about half of the families it surveyed said they had not been contacted.

“We can’t forget that he called fallen servicemembers ‘losers,’ either,” said Fugett, referring to reports, confirmed by Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, that Trump insulted wounded veterans in private conversations with staff and called fallen troops “losers” for sacrificing their lives for their country.

“As a military widow who cared for my husband at Walter Reed for four years after he was wounded and has seen so much pain and suffering and grief as a result of political ego and war, I do not claim Trump,” she said. “All he’s done is drag us into more conflicts that have led to more American deaths.”