There is trolling. And then there is presidential trolling.
President Biden concluded a five-day visit to France on Sunday with the intention of visiting a cemetery for American soldiers killed in World War I. That, of course, is the kind of thing presidents tend to do.
But this particular cemetery was the same one that President Donald J. Trump was supposed to visit in 2018 before canceling, citing rain and sparking a political furor. For Biden, who is running again against Trump, visiting the cemetery was meant to send a message to voters at home.
“America showed up,” he said. “America appeared.”
Biden was talking about the US military during World War I, but he might as well have been talking about Trump’s refusal to run six years ago.
When asked directly what he was trying to say about his rival in this year’s presidential race, Biden paused for a moment.
“Any other question?” he said.
But the decision to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought, was no coincidence. Having spent two days in Normandy paying tribute to the American soldiers who landed on the beaches there on D-Day in 1944, Biden certainly didn’t need to add another event honoring veterans. But evidently the opportunity was too good to pass up.
Neither Biden nor Trump ever served in the military, and both have had disagreements with the generals as commander in chief. But Biden’s son, Beau Biden, served in the military in Iraq and the president has expressed strong feelings of attachment to veterans. Trump, by contrast, has often denigrated those who have served, a point Biden wanted to draw attention to during his visit on Sunday.
“Every time I show up at a military site where veterans are buried, it brings back memories of listening to my grandfather and mother talk about losing a son and a brother in the South Pacific,” Biden told reporters Sunday after place a wreath near the cemetery chapel. “And I think of my son Beau.”
He also took advantage of the moment to indirectly criticize Trump, who has defended an ideology that prioritizes the United States and has mocked NATO’s role as protector of Europe, and who as president removed the United States from international pacts.
“The idea that we can avoid getting involved in major battles in Europe is simply not realistic,” Biden said. “That’s why it’s so important that we continue to have the alliances we have. Continue to keep NATO strong.”
As a candidate in 2015, Trump was dismissive of Sen. John McCain’s war service and privately often appeared disrespectful toward others who volunteered for military service.
“Anyone who went to that war was an idiot,” John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff and a retired Marine general, said of Vietnam. “I don’t know why you think these guys who get killed or injured are heroes. “They are losers.” Trump has denied calling soldiers “stupid” and “losers.”
Trump, who avoided service in Vietnam due to a diagnosis of bone spurs in his feet that, according to a New York Times report, may have come from a doctor as a courtesy to his father, made clear during his presidency that he believed the army owed its loyalty to him personally.
Privately, he told aides that he didn’t want wounded soldiers at a military parade because it didn’t look good and asked Kelly why his generals couldn’t be more loyal, “like the German generals” who served Hitler in World War II. . Since he left office, Trump has publicly suggested that Gen. Mark A. Milley, whom he named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, might deserve to be executed for not being loyal enough to him.
The cemetery flap was produced during a trip in November 2018 to commemorate the centenary of the armistice that ended the First World War. Trump was not happy when he found out that he was scheduled to visit two cemeteries for American soldiers, and when it rained, he canceled the first one.
Attendees said at the time that rain made flying to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery by helicopter problematic, and that traveling by car would have taken two hours and snarled Paris traffic. Kelly traveled by road instead, along with Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump visited another cemetery, the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris, as planned the next day, but by then it was too late to avoid the predictable political setback.