It’s been no well-kept secret over the years that Donald Trump was properly obsessed with the notion of a massive military display, usually in the form of a parade, that celebrated… Well… Himself.
But, according to yet another new tell-all Trump book that’s set to hit the shelves soon, Trump had a specific, should we say, aesthetic in mind, when it came to his big dictator-esque military displays of admiration. Apparently, the former guy didn’t want any wounded vets to be included in his big ole parade, because he felt they wouldn’t look good for him.
In a New York Times excerpt of the upcoming book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, the publication details an alleged confrontation Trump had with his then-Chief of Staff, in which the then-president argued that he didn’t want any wounded US veterans to participate in the military parade he was obsessed with because of the aesthetics of it.
Trump allegedly first got the idea for a huge military display after he found himself thoroughly impressed with the Bastille Day parade in Paris. After he witnessed that parade, Trump reportedly approached John Kelly, who was serving as his Chief of Staff at the time and expressed his desire to see a similar display of military force here in the US, under his presidential administration.
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Baker and Glasser wrote in the upcoming tell-all that upon his return from his 2017 trip to Paris, Trump told Kelly to see what he could do to replicate the military display here in the States, but made sure to specifically inform Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade. This doesn’t look good for me.”
“Kelly could not believe what he was hearing,” according to the book. “‘Those are the heroes,’ he told Trump. ‘In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are — and they are buried over in Arlington.'”
According to the tell-all, Trump only doubled down, repeating himself to Kelly, “I don’t want them. It doesn’t look good for me.”
This is, of course, far from the first accusation against Trump alleging that he doesn’t actually have any respect at all for the US military. In the past, he’s been accused of calling POWs and soldiers who died in battle, “Suckers and losers.”
Read the full New York Times report here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
