President Donald Trump came under renewed fire after a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a stop the White House appeared eager to present as a show of support for the nation’s wounded servicemen and servicewomen.
Yet as the specifics of the trip came to light, relatives of injured troops charged that the president sidestepped the very people many expected him to meet on his half-day schedule, triggering a backlash that quickly spread across social media and veterans’ communities.
Trump went in for a six-month check-up, according to the White House, his third in the past 14 months, on Tuesday May 26, but he deliberately avoided meeting any of the 14 service members recovering from injuries sustained during the president’s Operation Epic Fury, CBS News reported, citing a family member of an injured soldier.
A White House spokesperson told CBS, “President Trump was honored to meet with our amazing service members and medical staff while at Walter Reed Medical Center,” yet they declined to explain why he did not meet with anyone wounded in Tehran’s strike.
His visit came just a day after a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery where he referred to the 13 troops who had died in his unapproved war as “wonderful souls.”
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And a day after his Walter Reed stop, during his monthly Cabinet meeting, Trump again referenced the Iran casualties.
“We want to lose very few, we want very few to be injured. We’re very careful, but war is war. War is dangerous,” he insisted, underscoring the obvious, according to The Daily Beast.
He called the 13 who died “great people” and said their deaths were “a terrible thing.”
Sgt. 1st Class Cory Hicks survived an Iranian drone strike on a poorly protected U.S. military outpost in Kuwait in the early days of Trump’s war, a strike that left six soldiers dead and 20 more wounded. Hicks is one of six still hospitalized at Walter Reed.
He spoke with CBS Minnesota in April, describing injuries that included a lacerated kidney, a severed spleen, and a traumatic brain injury.
“I’ve come a long way, that’s for sure.” Hicks said.
“I spent 19 years in the military so far and I love serving my country, but this is a different kind of battle. When you’re injured, you’ve got to fight,” he added.
Social media reacted swiftly to Trump bypassing troops wounded in his war.
“As CBS News’ Michael Kaplan reported, while at Walter Reed hospital, Trump had the chance to visit with 14 U.S. soldiers wounded in his war of choice against Iran. Unsurprisingly, the coward snubbed EVERY SINGLE SOLDIER. He didn’t have the guts to meet them eye to eye,” fumed a Threads user.
“What a creep!” another Threads user proclaimed in response.
This user agreed, “He probably wandered into a room of soldiers by mistake. He’s a decrepit old rag with a mush-brain.”
Hicks told CBS that the days since the Iranian attack had been very hard.
“I lost six of my battle buddies who sat close to me, and that’s a struggle within itself,” the wounded soldier admitted.
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Trump’s aversion to injured troops is a well-documented pattern.
One of the most cited examples involved allegedly labeling fallen World War I Marines as “suckers” and “losers” after he canceled a 2018 visit to a cemetery in France, where more than 2,000 are interred. Trump has repeatedly denied the accounts, but members of his first administration have corroborated that he made the remarks.
Trump also compared brain injuries suffered by American personnel during a 2020 Iranian assault on a U.S. base in Iraq to “headaches,” and dismissed the wounds as “not very serious.”
