Presidential candidate Donald Trump is facing renewed criticism from veterans activists after comments Tuesday that appeared to accuse USA troops of stealing money earmarked for reconstruction efforts during the war in Iraq.
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“Iraq, crooked as hell”, Trump told supporters at the Greensboro Coliseum, Politico reports. Remember when they were handing 50 million dollars of cash? But instead of explaining himself or defending himself, Trump’s campaign is just out there pretending he never said it. Trump said. “Because I think they’re living very well right now, whoever they may be”.
The comments drew sharp rebuke online from a man who said he was involved in doling out recovery funds with the U.S. Army, who laid out his emotional connection to the subject in a series of tweets Wednesday. Also, it’s hard to believe, as the Trump campaign is now alleging, that Trump was referring to Iraq troops, when Trump made the same claim a year ago. In reality, it was Americans, not Iraqis, who were distributing millions of dollars, so the defense doesn’t make a lot of sense.
In other words, it’s not a case of those soldiers “living very well right now” – anyone who attempted this and was “living very well” got busted for doing so. Michael Dung Nguyen of OR was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after being found guilty in 2010 of pocketing more than $690,000 while serving as a civil affairs officer overseeing millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction project money and pay for private Iraqi security forces. “I wouldn’t be surprised if those soldiers, if the cash wasn’t there”.
The previous mention of American soldiers was made by Trump during a rally in 2015.
Similarly, the number of Muslims who support ISIS is also a tiny minority of the Muslim population as a whole, but this doesn’t stop Trump from tarring “the Muslims” as being collectively complicit in all terrorist activities.
But members of VoteVets.org, the largest groups of progressive veterans in the United States, said Trump’s accusations should prohibit him from becoming president.
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He experienced a totally normal, totally banal American politics gaffe cycle in which he said something politically awkward but totally defensible and then wound up spinning away from it furiously. You know why – because it’s unfair to USA soldiers who did their jobs honorably and didn’t skim funds to blithely imply that corruption was endemic.
