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September 16, 2020 10:24 AM UTC

Trump's Service Slurs: If El Paso County Believes, It's Bad

  • 9 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs) with President Donald Trump.

Pam Zubeck at the Colorado Springs Independent has a must-read story up today expounding on a question we’ve been wondering ourselves: will alleged remarks by President Donald Trump in 2018 disparaging fallen American soldiers as “losers” shake up the vote in El Paso County, home to the bulk of the state’s military bases and personnel?

The answer is a definite maybe–depending on where you get your news:

Several other news organizations, including Trump’s favored Fox News, have since substantiated portions of the report. But Trump and his allies labeled the report false, including Congressman Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, who called the magazine article “more ‘fake news’ such as we have seen many times from the Left.”

Colorado Springs City Councilor Andy Pico, a Navy veteran who’s running for State House District 16, predicts “zero impact” on election results here.

“An ugly, baseless and blatant smear by ‘anonymous’ gutless cowards that has been thoroughly refuted by a dozen witnesses who were there at the time, two years ago, is seen for the unethically dishonest fabrication that it is,” Pico says via email…

The short version is, if you’re of a mind to pre-emptively dismiss any negative information about Trump as “fake news,” you’re likely to do that once again in this case. But for at least some retired generals along the Ronald Reagan Highway, these comments are all too believable:

Retired Brig. Gen. Martin France, a 41-year veteran and lifelong Republican, and Democrat retired Major Gen. Irv Halter, who ran against Lamborn in 2014, had plenty to say, however.

“The comments are consistent with past offensive comments about Senator [John] McCain and others,” France notes. “Plus, I think the corroboration has been strong enough to remove any doubt from all but the most committed members of Trump’s cult of personality.” [Pols emphasis]

That said, France says Trump’s comments likely won’t move the needle locally for two reasons: Few voters remain undecided, and many “less conservative” officers and enlisted personnel cast absentee ballots in home states outside Colorado.

A Military Times poll released just a few days before Trump’s alleged remarks about dead American servicemen were reported by The Atlantic showed that support for the president has dramatically weakened from the huge majority of military support he enjoyed in the 2016 elections. It remains to be seen how much this shift in support will register in the election in El Paso County, in the presidential race itself or–perhaps more importantly given the likely statewide result–down the ballot.

In the end, it depends on whether individual voters are in the loop for any negative news about Trump.

If they are, and they believe it, the presidential race for them is over.

Comments

9 thoughts on “Trump’s Service Slurs: If El Paso County Believes, It’s Bad

  1. Well, one of the episodes in the recent “suckers” and “losers” allegations is about the Memorial Day visit to Section 60, laying flowers on the grave of John Kelly’s son. 

    Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.

    Pictures show the scene:  people there were Trump, Kelly, Kelly’s son & daughter, VP Pence.  Everyone else is out of easy range for conversation. From the context, the *resident, VP and Kelly are not the source. The writer hints of multiple “people close to him” as sources for what Kelly understood, but also presents the direct quote and action.

    Choices come down to: the son, who is active military and cannot be labelled the source on pain of “anti-disparagement” regulations, or the daughter.  Kelly neither confirms or denies the tale, and the fact that he doesn’t help an “innocent” *resident Trump weighs pretty heavily on my sense of the incident.

  2. This is Swiftboating with the truth.  Doesn't matter if it is true or not because it keeps Trump on the defensive and if you are playing defense in politics then you suck at it.  It is another data point to go with not caring about Russian bounties or Gold Star families.  Doubt creeps in every time another negative story comes out with receipts that he has to repudiate.  Doesn't help Gardner that he is a Trump water boy.  Doesn't help at all.  Need all those 'losers' and 'suckers' in those government jobs to vote straight Republicans because FREEDOM.  Swiftboating karma to Republicans.

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