Veterans speak out against Trump

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, spoke on veterans’ affairs in Virginia Beach on July 11.  Immediately following the event, members of Vets VS Hate criticized the business mogul’s speech and explained why they don’t want a Trump White House.

“Donald Trump clearly is not interested in what veterans need or what veterans want,” War on Terror veteran Alex McCoy said.  “He’s not interested in actually taking care of us.”

McCoy co-founded Vets VS Hate when The Washington Post reported that Trump failed to donate money he claimed he had donated to veterans’ charity groups.

“That was the tipping point for me.  He was using veterans as political props beyond what you normally see in American politics.  This is somebody using me and people like me who serve to shield himself from hard questions and use the good will that Americans have to sell his destructive policies.”

Vets VS Hate works directly against hate speech and bigotry that leads Americans to blaming certain issues on specific groups of people.  While not an anti-Trump organization, Vets VS Hate has labeled the Republican Party’s nominee as the poster child of such hate rhetoric.

“Once we realized this was Trump’s main platform for building a voter base, we started to organize,” Iraq War veteran Ramond Curtis said.  “It’s not an anti-Trump group; it just happens to be that Donald Trump is the main figure in using hate, bigotry and fear as his main fuel for building his campaign.”

Both McCoy and Curtis stated that Trump has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to veterans’ issues and foreign policy.  They pointed to his speech in Virginia as a prime example.

“He spent the majority of his time talking about police officers and then more time talking about Hillary Clinton and her emails than he spent talking about veterans,” Curtis said.  “He just used veterans’ issues, yet again, to his own political advantage.”

“I think it’s enlightening how, for a speech that was supposed to be about issues facing veterans, he talked very little about veterans,” McCoy said.  “It just shows that he’s trying to bring in media attention.  He’s using this to go on an unhinged rant about violence in inner cities.”

When Trump did talk about veterans’ issues, he continued to make the point that the VA is failing and private health care is the answer.

As veterans themselves, McCoy and Curtis condemned the notion that the VA should be privatized.  They both reiterated their belief that the GOP nominee has no idea how the system works and referenced his lack of military experience.

They also feel insulted that a man who is proposing such radical changes to veterans’ programs and has made controversial remarks towards POWs is running for commander-in-chief.

“For someone who has said STDs were his ‘own personal Vietnam,’ for someone who has dodged the draft multiple times, for him to insult our prisoners of war is something I find deeply hurtful,” McCoy said.

Despite voters anticipating a detailed plan on how to take care of veterans, the billionaire used empty rhetoric to cover his opponent, her scandal with the FBI, law enforcement and criminal activity.

“I am the law-and-order candidate,” Trump asserted during his statement.  “Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is weak, ineffective, pandering and as proven by her recent email scandal … she’s either a liar or grossly incompetent.”

While Trump leads Clinton by about nine percent in the polls, that’s not a good sign for the Republican politician.  McCain and Romney both led Obama by more than 20 percent among veterans.  A GOP candidate failing to have a significant lead among military voters is historically a red flag.  McCoy highlights how and why the mogul is failing to gain veteran support.

“People have this myth that the military is inherently conservative and right-wing,” McCoy said.  “That doesn’t match up to the facts; the military is incredibly diverse.  If you look, even at conservatives in the military, Donald Trump is historically unpopular.”

The Donald clearly isn’t resonating enough with service members.  Voters are discovering that the same tactics and rhetoric that worked in the primaries aren’t the best option in the general election.