Note: This is an extended version of the article printed in CXIII.6 of The Chatterbox, Dec. 11, 2018.

The President of the United States doesn’t care about America’s military. He has made fun of them, ignored them and disrespected them so many times that it’s easy to lose count. Unlike any president before him, Donald Trump has disregarded the most important part of his role as Commander-in-Chief, leading by example in supporting the men and women who put their lives on the line for our country, and honoring those who have made great sacrifices for it.

On Oct. 31, Donald Trump ordered 5,200 military personnel to be deployed at the U.S.-Mexico border to stop migrants from entering the country.  A caravan of between 4,000 and 5,000 migrants from Central America, mostly Honduras, have been traveling toward the U.S. border, planning to apply for political asylum. The migrants made their way to Mexico City, where they rode on buses to Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego.

They now line up at the border every day, awaiting their chance to enter the United States and apply for asylum, though legal ports of entry only allow 50-100 asylum claims per day, according to Nov. 26 BBC coverage. The deployed troops, however, are all along the border with Mexico; in Texas and Arizona and New Mexico, many of them hundreds of miles from where these migrants would cross.

“This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” Trump tweeted on Oct. 29.

This is just one example of the many political stunts Trump has used the military for, and because of him, many of these troops were not able to see their families for Thanksgiving. The troops were stuck in large tents that lack air conditioning and electricity, according to a Nov. 10 New York Times article.

For Veterans Day this year, President Trump planned a grand military parade in Washington, D.C., full of members of every branch of the military and hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment on display. However, there were multiple problems with this plan. Trump’s proposed parade would have cost $21.6 million dollars, according to D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser, with millions more in damages caused to D.C.’s roads. A parade of its type has never been held in the United States, with tanks and missile trucks rolling through boulevards echoing parades by the Red Army in Moscow during the Cold War. Here, Trump again attempted to use the military to prop up his own ego, emulating the world’s dictators that he appears to respect.

While campaigning for president, Trump regularly put down his opponents, even declaring that “I like people who weren’t captured,” in reference to Sen. John McCain, who had survived torture as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.

He even put down a Gold Star family who gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in July of 2016. Trump said of the family, who lost their son in the Iraq War in 2004 and are Muslim, that the mother “was not allowed to speak,” implying that it was because of their faith. He later wrote the family an apology letter for his statements.

In June of 2017, Trump promised the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan $25,000 personally, to “aid [the family] in this time of grief.” The check never came until Trump came under fire for not delivering on his promise months later, along with another apology.

In October of 2017, after three Green Berets were killed in an operation in Niger, Trump had to apologize to the family of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson. According to Johnson’s widow, Myeshia, Trump could not recall LaDavid’s name during her phone call with the president, also saying that Johnson “knew what he signed up for,” downplaying the incident that resulted in Johnson’s death. According to a Pentagon investigation, Johnson was left behind by his comrades while still alive, though it is unclear how long he survived before his body was discovered two days later.

Trump himself never served in the military, which is not unusual for presidents, and has been accused of dodging the Vietnam draft by submitting false doctor’s reports. He deferred from the draft five times, four times as a college student, and once citing a medical issue, bone spurs in his feet. When questioned about the medical issue in 2016, Trump could not remember what foot the bone spurs were in, despite his own claim of having “one of the greatest memories of all time,” stated in an Oct. 27, 2016 campaign rally.

These instances show, once again, that President Trump has no real respect for America’s military, only using them as generic subjects of pathos, or triumphs for his own ego. He has shown no qualities of being a good commander, and has never even visited U.S. troops in a foreign combat zone, something nearly unheard of from presidents of the last three decades.

The men and women who put their lives on the line for our country are more than props, more than people who “knew what they signed up for.” They are America’s heroes, and should gain the respect of every American, let alone the basic acknowledgement of the man in charge of commanding them.

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