‘You’re the Loser’: Biden Calls Out Trump for Bashing Military

Nikki McCann Ramirez

June 27, 2024 at 10:24 p.m.·3 min read

In a debate where President Joe Biden struggled to maintain a coherent presence, there was at least one exchange where the president managed to land a rhetorical punch against the ramblings of former President Donald Trump.

In response to a question on immigration, Trump claimed that Biden “doesn’t care about our veterans.”

“He doesn’t like the military at all, and he doesn’t care about our veterans,” Trump added. Nobody has been worse. I had the highest approval rating for veterans.” The former president accused Biden of overturning popular policies supporting the VA and veterans simply because he had been the one to enact them into law.

“Every single thing he just said is a lie,” Biden responded, pointing to his expansion of health care benefits under the Honoring our PACT Act of 2022, and his administration’s work eliminating toxic burn bits.

Biden raised the story of his son Beau Biden death from brain cancer in 2015 after being exposed to toxic chemicals while serving in Iraq, and noted that Trump had called deceased service members “sucker” and “losers” during a 2018 visit to France.

“My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You’re the sucker, you’re the loser,” Biden told Trump.

Biden forcefully rebuked Trump for him reportedly calling military veterans suckers.

"My son was not a sucker or a loser. You're the sucker. You're the loser," Biden told Trump, evoking his late son Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer. https://t.co/CaVe1npQeN pic.twitter.com/DUVBv3NXvY
— Axios (@axios) June 28, 2024

Trump countered that “that was a made-up quote.”

“I’m so glad this came up and he brought it up,” the former president continued. “There’s nobody that’s taken better care of our soldiers than I have. To think that I would in front of generals and others say ‘suckers and losers.’ We have 19 people that said it was never said by me, it was made up by him just like Russia, Russia, Russia was made up.”

“He made up the suckers and losers, so he should apologize to me right now,” Trump demanded.

Biden countered that the story had been confirmed by John Kelly, a retired four-star general who had accompanied Trump on the trip where he allegedly made the comments.

Trump is “a person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,'” Kelly told CNN last year. ‘A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Biden refused to back down onstage, rejecting “the idea that I have to apologize to you for anything along the line. We’ve done more for veterans than any president has in American history.”

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