By Scott Taylor
During his 2015 campaign for the Republican Party leadership, Donald J. Trump claimed that he was “the most militaristic person ever.” No sooner had Trump made that boastful claim than the press pilloried him for his demonstrable absence of any actual military service. The New York Post dubbed him “G.I. Joke” and commentators pointed out that Trump had obtained five separate medical deferments for bone spurs to keep from being drafted during the Vietnam War.
Doubling down on his claims of martial prowess Trump pilloried the war record of Republican rival John McCain. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump told reporters. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
At the time it all seemed to be an amusing distraction for Canadians because no one thought for a minute that Trump would actually win the Republican leadership, let alone the Presidency.
That all changed in November 2016 when Trump became the Commander-In-Chief of the world’s greatest military superpower.
During his presidency Trump has often reminded Americans of the importance of understanding their history and culture and then proceeded to promptly illustrate his own glaring ignorance of the same subjects.
In one memorable off script aside Trump praised George Washington and his revolutionary fighters for “seizing the airports” more than 125 years before the airplane was invented.
More recently and perhaps more alarmingly was Trump’s historical reference regarding the current COVID-19 pandemic. Explaining the U.S. government’s initial lack of preparedness, Trump said that was because this viral disease was unprecedented. “The closest was in 1917 … the great pandemic [which] cost 50 to 100 million lives,” said Trump. “It probably ended the Second World War … All the soldiers were sick.”
If you are going to reference historical events when addressing the impact of an ongoing pandemic - that has now claimed more U.S. lives than the first World War, Vietnam War, Iraq and Afghanistan - combined - then you would think the ‘most militaristic person ever’ might have his facts in the ballpark at least. But no.
The Spanish flu of 1918 did not end the First World War, let alone the Second World War which concluded in 1945 with Germany’s surrender and Japan’s capitulation following the dropping of two atomic bombs. No war in history ever ended when “all the soldiers got sick.”
Again, for us in Canada Trump’s comical distortions of history could be viewed as harmlessly amusing. However as Trump is now in full campaign mode he is portraying himself as the “Law and Order!” President. In fact he tweets out that exact phrase every few hours complete with exclamation point just in case you weren’t sure.
What is frightening for all of us who share the North American land mass is that for Trump to portray himself as America’s firefighter there needs to be a fire. During the wave of chaos that has engulfed U.S. cities centered on the Black Lives Matter movement, Trump has been quick to offer state governors the use of federal law enforcement to control the civilian crowds.
In early June Trump brought in federal law enforcement officers and military police to clear protestors from Lafayette Square adjacent to the White House. At the time this use of force drew a stern rebuke from James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, the retired Marine general and former Secretary of Defence. In an opinion piece for the Atlantic, Mattis wrote: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking the same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”
My fear is that what Mattis could not have dreamed of will soon become a full on nightmare in the run up to the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3.
