President Donald Trump has established a unique relationship with American veterans to say the least, freely lambasting elements from their ranks when it suits him but adhering to their military ideology all the same. This week at the White House, he leaned into a particularly noteworthy example of the latter tendency, hosting four World War II veterans in the Oval Office, which he chronicled with a strange seeming attempt at a propaganda video that went up on his personal Twitter profile.
The video highlights Allen Jones, who Trump invited on stage with him during his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) convention last year. At the time, Jones asked if he could visit the Oval Office, and Trump fulfilled that request this Thursday — the veteran’s birthday.
In the video promoted via the president’s personal Twitter account, a strange, creeping tune seemingly meant to convey some kind of grandiosity plays throughout the brief comparison of moments from that VFW convention and this Thursday’s Oval Office meeting.
Beautiful afternoon in the Oval Office today with a few great American HEROES! pic.twitter.com/HYEI83NVrm
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2019
Besides Jones, Trump also had three other World War II veterans for a visit on Thursday, all of whom are 100 years of age or older. The president offered a promise to 101-year-old Floyd Wigfield to have him on Air Force One to return from a 75th anniversary ceremony for D-Day next year in France. Wigfield and 103-year-old Paul Kriner “are working with the Greatest Generations Foundation, which provides veterans with the chance to memorialize their stories and find closure by returning to visit where they served,” The Washington Post explains.
The moments stand in stark contrast to some of the president’s other behavior towards veterans. Infamously, for instance, during the 2016 campaign season, he found no issue with attacking the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for being captured as a prisoner of war and freely attacked the family of a Muslim serviceman slain overseas after they dared criticize him. He dragged that mess out for a significant period of time.
On a different front, Trump has repeatedly pushed for dramatic increases in military funding, even while seeking to slash the budgets at other government agencies by outlandishly dramatic margins. He has freely contorted the U.S. Armed Forces apparatus to his own political agenda numerous times, including via his deployment of soldiers to confront mostly nonviolent asylum seekers at the southern border a week before election day.
Check out Twitter’s response to the president’s latest attempt to clean up that mess below:
Featured Image via screenshot
