Buttigieg slams Trump comments to Milley about wounded veteran
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is seen during a House Subcommittee on Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies hearing to discuss the President's FY 2024 budget for the Department of Transportation on Thursday, April 20, 2023.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg slammed former President Trump’s reported comments to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley about a wounded veteran, saying they were just the latest “in a pattern of outrageous attacks” on those who serve the country.
CNN’s Dana Bash asked Buttigieg on “State of the Union” on Sunday what his response was to an interview Milley gave to The Atlantic in which he described an instance when Trump complained to him about a wounded Army veteran. Milley said Trump asked him, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded,” and told him to not allow that wounded veteran to appear in public again.
“These are the kind of people who deserve respect, and a hell of a lot more than that, from every American and definitely from every American president,” Buttigieg, who is himself a Navy veteran, told Bash.
“And the idea that an American president, the person to whom service members look as a commander in chief, and the person who sets the tone for this entire country, could think that way or act that way or talk that way about anyone in uniform, and certainly about those who put their bodies on the line and sacrificed in ways that most Americans will never understand, and I guess — I guess wounded veterans make President Trump feel uncomfortable,” he added.
Buttigieg said that this month marks the nine-year anniversary of his return from the one tour he served in Afghanistan with the Navy. He recounted his military experiences, noting that those service members who were injured were also often eager to continue serving the country.
He said those veterans are the kinds of people America should “lift up, because their commitment could help unify the country.”
Following the publication of the Atlantic article, Trump posted a series of attacks against Milley on Truth Social in which he accused the top general of going behind his back to talk to Chinese counterparts — an apparent reference to calls Milley made to reassure China near the end of Trump’s term. He suggested that Milley deserved the death penalty.
“This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act,” Trump wrote.