Former President Donald Trump's recent attempt to curry favor with America's military families was shredded in a new analysis that found more soldiers died under his administration than President Joe Biden's, and he honored them less often.
Slate delivered this damning report after family members of fallen U.S. soldiers and Marines took to the Republican National Convention stage and blamed Biden for the deaths of those they loved and lost.
It was, as Slate's foreign policy reporter Fred Kaplan described it, "the most disturbing spectacle."
"I wondered about two things while watching this emotional display," Kaplan wrote. "First, family members of just six of the 13 fallen troops were onstage. Did families of the other seven feel the same way?"
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"Second, I wondered what this proud mother would have thought if she’d known how Trump behaved with the families of soldiers and Marines killed on his own watch as president."
Kaplan then characterizes Trump's behavior on his own terms: "Not very honorably."
Official statistics show 65 service members died in combat during Trump's administration in comparison to the 16 who have lost their lives under Biden's, Kaplan reports.
Trump only attended dignified returns of nine of the fallen service members, Kaplan reports. One time, he brought Jon Voight along for the ride.
"After one visit, when the father of a fallen soldier criticized Trump for sending his son on a disastrous raid in Yemen, he didn’t go to another ceremony for two years," Kaplan reports.
Biden, in comparison, has attended both of the dignified returns to take place since he entered the White House in 2021, according to Kaplan.
"Republicans often say that America stayed out of wars, and suffered few if any casualties, under Trump’s years in office," Kaplan writes. "But this just isn’t true."
