THE PRESIDENT ATTACKS ATLANTIC AUTHOR, JEFFREY GOLDBERG
…Jeffrey Goldberg’s highly critical Atlantic article
about President Trump
Trump once again, lies about having witnesses
to Goldberg’s story
The president is referring to Jeffrey Goldberg of the first rate magazine, the Atlantic, that published an article on Sept. 3 that was at once, both surprising and yet, not surprising: The most egregious quote from the article was that President Trump had said: “Americans who died in war are losers and suckers”. Also that the president had famously attacked the late senator John McCain (R-AZ), saying he wasn’t a war hero, because he said: “I like people who weren’t captured.” But Goldberg provided what he said were new accounts of Trump’s private remarks disparaging soldiers who died in service of the United States.
The people who recounted these remarks were not identified by the Goldberg. In trying to refute the article, the White House has focused on the following excuse: “That Trump canceled a visit to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he did not believe it was important to honor American war dead.
In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, ‘Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,’” Goldberg wrote. “In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as ‘suckers’ for getting killed.”
Goldberg attributed the information to “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day.”
It’s often a fool’s game to try to figure out a reporter’s anonymous sources. Sometimes, principals use what’s called ”cutouts”. Those are aides who speak to reporters, but give themselves plausible deniability. Or people may deny on the record speaking to a reporter, when in fact he or she was an actual source. In other words, they lie about talking to the reporters.
Moreover, other news organizations, including The Washington Post and most notably Jennifer Griffin of Fox News, have confirmed elements of Goldberg’s report. Griffin reported that an unnamed administration official said that “When the President spoke about the Vietnam War,” he said, ‘It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker.’” She also reported that Trump simply did not want to travel by motorcade to Aisne-Marne cemetery. But she also said she could not confirm that the president described the American war dead there as “suckers” and “losers.”
The White House has collected the names of 25 people who claim to refute Goldberg’s reporting on the cemetery decision. Trump called them “witnesses,” but as usual, that’s wrong. Eleven people on the list were not with Trump. They are mostly administration officials serving at the pleasure of the president or communications aides, and so they can only offer their opinions.
Strikingly, two people who figure prominently in the article, then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Gen. Joseph Dunford, they have not commented. Their silence on this explosive story certainly is important in evaluating its accuracy. Both men would have the credibility to refute the story, so readers could consider their refusal to comment as some sort of confirmation of the story.
Still, 14 people who were traveling in France as part of the president’s group have disputed elements of the story. That sounds like a big number, but you have to consider who is speaking and their level of credibility. You also have to read carefully between the lines of their denials.
Here are the 14 witnesses, and it must be noted that they were there at the White House, “only at the pleasure of the president”. That means that if they didn’t say what the president wanted to hear, they were usually gone. And many of these people have already come and gone from the Trump administration. In addition, some have written less than flattering books about the president, such as John Bolton. A number have already been caught in a number of lies such as Mike Pompeo, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Hogan Gridley. In addition, you will notice that a number are already referred to as, “former” advisers to the president, as they have already, “gotten out of Dodge!”
The 14 individuals are:
- Former National Security
Adviser, John Bolton.
- Former Deputy Chief of
Staff, Zach Fuentes
- Former Deputy Assistant
to the President, Jordan Karem
- Counselor to the
President, Derek Lyons
- Deputy Chief of Staff
for Operations, Tony Ornato
- Former Deputy Chief of
Staff, Dan Walsh
- Retired Major General,
William Matz
- US Ambassador to France
& Monaco, Jamie McCourt
- Former Counselor to the
President, Johnny Destefano
- Assistant to the
President & Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino
- Senior Advisor to the
President, Stephen Miller
- Former Principal Deputy
Press Secretary, Hogan Gridley
- First Lady, Melania
Trump
- Former Press Secretary, Sarah Sanders
As a further comment: Three of Trump’s most loyal aides, one of whom now works for the Trump campaign and two of whom still work at the White House. They would walk through fire for Trump.
For the record,
the other 11 denials that weren’t even with the president are:
- Secretary of Defense,
Mark Esper
- Secretary of State, Mike
Pompeo
- Secretary of Veteran’s
Affairs, Robert Wilkie
- Chief of Staff, Mark
Meadows
- National Security Advisor.
Robert O’Brien
- Lt. General &
National Security Adviser to the VP, Keith Kellogg
- Former Acting Chief of
Staff, Mick Mulvaney
- Former Chief of Staff to
the VP, Nick Ayers
- Press Secretary,
Kayleigh McEnany
- Assistant to the
President, Alyssa Farah
- Deputy Press Secretary, Judd Deere
Here's the
Bottom Line:
As you
can see, the claim that there are 25 “witnesses” is highly inflated. At
best, 14 people that deny the story were traveling with the president, but some
were not in the room when the alleged conversations took place.
The two most credible denials, from Bolton and Fuentes, it suggests that such conversations might have taken place, just not at the time described by Goldberg. Meanwhile, other journalists have reported that they have confirmed other aspects of Goldberg’s reporting, including the broader theme of how Trump fails to understand the notion of sacrifice in the US military.
When faced with a negative story, a common tactic by any government agency, especially at the White House, it is to seize on one element that may be slightly off in an effort to discredit the entire story. Still, one must also acknowledge that the four individuals for the Atlantic article remain unidentified. The silence of Kelly and Dunford could be taken as a confirmation, or simply their unwillingness to defend the president.
The Washington Post could hand out their Pinocchio’s to Trump for inflating the number, but it’s difficult to settle on a rating without determining how many of the 14 witnesses are actually credible.
It will instead be up to my readers to consider whether their denials, or if their “no-comment,” would undermine the broad thrust of Goldberg’s reporting.
It is obvious that as usual, Trump was obviously again exaggerating about having 25 witnesses. It appears that he didn’t have even a couple of real witnesses.
Copyright
G. Ater 2020
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