Contempt of Service

Morning Dispatch

Search operation at Pabrade training ground.

Four US soldiers who went missing on Tuesday, 25 March during a NATO training mission near the Belarus border have been confirmed dead. When Donald Trump, the ostensible commander-in-chief, was asked about the incident on Tuesday afternoon, he claimed he hasn't been briefed. While the families waited in agony for any word of what happened, the an who is supposed to be in charge of the United States military couldn’t be bothered to ask a single question about the soldiers’ status.

All four were from Fort Stewart in Georgia and belonged to the first brigade, third infantry division. They were riding in a 70-ton Hercules M 88 armored vehicle to assist a broken-down transport.

Their vehicle was found submerged less than 10 kilometers from the Belarusian border, an area of heightened sensitivity because of the Russian military influence in the area.

When asked about the missing soldiers, Donald's response revealed a lack of awareness of the situation. It’s also possible he was briefed, but had forgotten because such things are unimportant to him despite the fact that this incident involved US troops abroad, something he's supposed to pretend to care about. It should go without saying that a response from the Commander-in-Chief, even this one, during such a crisis is something people look to.

As for his not having been told anything about the missing soldiers, that is simply not believable. There is no universe in which the person sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office has no knowledge of the fate of four U.S. serving in hostile foreign territory.

It should offend us that Donald can sit there and claim that he doesn’t know anything—especially since the training exercise during which the missing soldiers went missing took place in a region where NATO's presence is crucial in countering Russian aggression. Lithuania is a vocal Ukrainian ally and it sits on the front lines of NATO's deterrent strategy against Russia and its ally Belarus. Any military mishap in this context could be deeply consequential.

We know how this may go, especially now that the United States has almost entirely withdrawn its vital support of Ukraine while bolstering the agenda of our enemy, Russia:

If Ukraine if it falls, that is the first domino. Then Russia will encroach upon the other countries that are currently holding the line. That includes Lithuania and Poland.

Donald has made his loyalties, if you can even call them that, very, very clear since the 1980s. But let's start with the 2016 election during which he made it very obvious that he has no respect for Gold Star families. He has no use for the concept of “service.” He doesn't care about active duty troops, he doesn't care about veterans, he doesn't care about those who have fallen.

The question, why? Why is this person incapable of even going through the motions and, even in a time of crisis, standing up and at the very least, pretending that this is a matter of utmost importance to him?

In order to understand this, we have to put his ostensibly unfathomable behavior in its historical context. My grandfather, Fred, cared about one thing—his business which ultimately meant making money. That was it. My grandfather knew real estate, he was good at it and because that was the most expeditious way for him to make his fortune, being a success in that realm became for him the only viable, respectable, valued way to be a “success” at all. And this extended to his sons—especially, at first, his oldest son (my dad), Freddy.

Despite the fact that my grandfather’s vast fortune was built on and with hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, he hated paying taxes. He passed that attitude on to at least three of his children—including Donald.

The end result was that the only thing that matters to Donald is money. It is, indeed, the only currency he understands. My father was the exception. His priorities were completely different. During his freshman year at Lehigh University he enrolled in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). After he graduated, he became a second lieutenant in the National Guard. He served with a great deal of pride and valued the experiences and camaraderie as much as any he ever had. This was in the early 1960s, so he and my mother were concerned he might be called to serve in Viet Nam. He never was, but he was prepared to go.

All of this, however, was considered frivolous and even selfish by Fred, just as his father considered being a professional pilot for TWA at the dawn of the jet age frivolous, selfish, somehow unmanly.

Having any ambitions separate from making money for his empire were beyond his consideration. He called my father, who flew 707s from Logan to LAX in 1964 for the second biggest airline on the planet, a “glorified chauffeur” and a “bus driver in the sky.” His National Guard training weekends at the armory in Manhattan and the the weeks spent at Fort Drum in upstate New York were valuable time spent away from the real work of further enriching him.

My father couldn’t withstand the assaults and quit flying in August of 1964, eventually going back to Trump Management where things went downhill from there. He internalized this shame so deeply that I didn’t even know he was in the National Guard until I stumbled across the medals he kept hidden in a shoe box that he put in the corner of his closet. He could barely talk about it.

That's the attitude Donald, who was almost eight years younger, grew up with. The other lesson Donald learned was not to be anything like Freddy. Why? Because being like Freddy would get him killed. So, he bought in to the selfishness. He bought in to the idea that the only thing that mattered was money—even if the only way to make himself richer was at the expense of everybody else.

Defending your country? Sacrifice and service? Who the fuck needs that? That's not real men's work. No, in the Trump family, real men's work was collecting rent from middle-class tenants so the Trump family-or at least Fred and Donald—could continue to get richer. Now, even veterans who supported Donald are waking up to the betrayal.

I'm not going to throw any stones here, but I do wonder why it's taken so long. There has been so much evidence, after all, of Donald’s contempt for them, their service, and their sacrifices.

Is it that veterans and active service members get their information from outlets like Fox that do not tell them the truth about their Commander-in-Chief? Or are they, like many people in the United States, so deeply identified with their politics they reject all evidence that contradicts their beliefs?

While Donald can't be bothered keeping track of active duty troops overseas, regardless of what kind of danger they may be in, here the Trump regimes is gutting support for veterans. Elon Musk is leading a draconian cost-cutting initiative at the Department of Veterans Affairs and has fired 25,000 probationary federal employees, including nearly 1,700 from the VA alone. These cuts disproportionately affect veterans who make up nearly 30% of the VA workforce.

The VA has already announced plans to cut as many as Veteran Affairs 72,000 workers. About 15%. Appointment wait times can already be up to four months long.

More than 9 million veterans get physical or mental healthcare from the VA. The nonprofit Grace after Fire handles overflow from the VA, specifically connecting women to alternative resources.

Anthony Murro and other VA employees warned that these cuts are severely damaging morale and reducing the agency's ability to provide care for veterans. The Trump regime has tried to reassure veterans that VA services won't deteriorate and VA secretary Doug Collins, a former GOP Congressman, has insisted no “mission critical” positions were eliminated, though Murro begs to differ. He believes his own job made a difference for veterans, and he's certain the upheaval and hit to morale wrought by the administration's firings will dog the agency for years. He said,

You walk down the hall and you could see it. You can hear people whisper about it, and now you get these people that are scared, that are worried, and they're thinking about all this other stuff, and they're trying to care for the veterans. You cannot tell me it's not having an impact on veteran healthcare.

A leaked memo suggests further deep staffing reductions could bring the VA workforce back to 2019 levels when fewer veterans were eligible for care. Murro continues,

Everybody can admit that we need to look at efficiency. It's been a problem for decades, but when you're dealing with veterans, you have to be more intentional with your actions. You have to be more surgical. It's almost like he's trying to tear the VA down.

Many veterans, including Murro, voted for Donald but now regret their decision as they witness his reckless cuts to the very institution that serves them. Concerns grow over the long-term impact on healthcare access for millions of veterans. Carlin Nelson, a marine veteran and office manager at Wyoming, Virginia Center, was fired on February 24th, 2025. Despite a glowing performance review.

NBC reports,

The veteran suicide rate in Wyoming is 50% higher than the rest of the country. In Cheyenne. There's a small VA center dedicated just to mental health. On February 24th, the office manager was fired. She was one of the thousands of probationary federal employees fired by email for their performance. But a recent review obtained by NBC News was glowing. Her manager writing, ‘As a veteran herself. She listens with empathy. She's the first person our clients come into contact with.’

Many rural veterans, especially those with lower incomes, rely on VA services because of long travel distances to medical facilities. Staff cuts could further limit access to essential mental health services and some warn that cutting frontline staff will harm veterans seeking immediate help.

Other VA employees fear speaking out, particularly in Republican-dominated states like Wyoming, where 70% of the electorate voted for Donald. I think it’s important to pause for a second and emphasize that our veterans are afraid to speak about not getting the services they need in districts that are heavily Republican. These are the Americans who sacrificed a lot to serve our country, to protect our rights and our freedoms. And yet they are afraid to speak out in districts that are overwhelmingly support the so-called Commander-in-Chief, even though he's the one preventing them from getting the services that were promised to them before they signed up to serve in the first place.

But Donald Trump knows nothing about service. In fact, he has contempt for it. He claims ownership of “his generals” in order to puff him up and make him feel better about his miserable, pathetic, unaccomplished self. He deferred his service in Vietnam five times using a fictional injury as an excuse because he is and always has been a coward.

But he is incapable of owning that. Instead, he looks down upon those who actually have the courage to serve their country, who have actually done what he is incapable of doing. Now in this most petty and cruel act of vengeance, because believe me, he recognizes their superiority, just as he recognized my father’s, he's trying to make their lives unbearable by takin away everything this country owes to them. Because that’s who he is.