Former President Donald J. Trump gave a fiery rebuttal on Friday to two damning quotations attributed to him by The Atlantic magazine, which accused him of disparaging fallen veterans and of making a racist remark about a murdered Mexican-American soldier.
During a campaign stop in Texas, Mr. Trump vehemently denied being opposed to paying for the funeral of Specialist Vanessa Guillén, a Fort Hood soldier who was murdered in 2020, when Mr. Trump was president, because of the cost. He was joined at the event in Austin, Texas, by some of Specialist Guillén’s relatives.
An article published on Tuesday in The Atlantic magazine said Mr. Trump had expressed sticker shock when he asked an aide if his administration had received a bill for the funeral expenses for Specialist Guillén. While hosting her family at the White House in April 2020, Mr. Trump had offered to help cover any expenses not picked up by the military.
“It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!’” the article quoted Mr. Trump saying.
On Friday, the former president said Specialist Guillén’s family had stepped forward to help vindicate him.
“You know, I have these people saying all this bad stuff,” Mr. Trump said. “Then, all of a sudden, the family that they’re talking about comes out of nowhere and says, ‘President Trump was perfect. What he did was so great. He got us the money.’”
When Mr. Trump met with the family at the White House in 2020, he told them, “And if I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help, I’ll help you out — financially, I’ll help you.” A lawyer for the family of Specialist Guillén told The Atlantic that she had sent the bill to the White House but that no money was ever received by the family from Mr. Trump. According to the magazine, the lawyer, Natalie Khawam, said that some of the funeral costs were covered by the Army and some were covered by donations.
Mr. Trump repeatedly assailed the magazine and its editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote the article and who also reported two months before the 2020 election that Mr. Trump had privately referred to American soldiers killed in combat as “losers” and “suckers.”
In a statement, Mr. Goldberg defended his reporting. He described how Mr. Trump made his remark about the cost of the funeral at a meeting on Dec. 4, 2020, and he attributed his reporting to two people present and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant.
“I understand why the Guillén family would be upset to read this story,” Mr. Goldberg said in the statement. “I stand by my reporting, including the undisputed detail that Trump never provided the family with any financial assistance.”
Mr. Goldberg also defended his 2020 report on Mr. Trump’s comments disparaging fallen American soldiers, by saying that John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, told him Mr. Trump used these terms. In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Kelly confirmed The Atlantic reporting that Mr. Trump had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as “losers” and “suckers.”
The magazine’s 2020 report has continued to chafe at Mr. Trump, who has frequently cast himself as a champion for the U.S. military, combat veterans and fallen service members.
On Friday, Mr. Trump said that it was preposterous to accuse him of calling soldiers who died during World War I as “suckers” and “losers” while standing over their graves.
“Can you imagine anybody doing it?” Mr. Trump said. “I may be the president, but I think somebody would start a fistfight, and probably I would say, ‘You were right.’ Who would do this? They make up stories.”
Calling Mr. Goldberg a “sleazebag,” Mr. Trump said that Tuesday’s story was timed to persuade voters in the final days of an election, just like in 2020.
“The problem I have, Ted, is that five, 10, 20 percent of people when they read that, they’re going to believe it,” said Mr. Trump, speaking to Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who joined him at the event.
Mr. Trump thanked the relatives of Specialist Guillén who were in attendance — her mother Gloria and her sister Mayra, who wrote on social media after The Atlantic article was published that she had voted early for Mr. Trump.
“They are an incredible, brave and beautiful family,” Mr. Trump said.
Ms. Khawam, the family’s lawyer, said they were invited by Mr. Trump to join him on his plane before his speech, and they met him there.
“We truly appreciate his ongoing kindness and his steadfast support for our military and their families,” Ms. Khawam said in a statement.
Mr. Trump’s remarks on Friday echoed his attacks on The Atlantic a day earlier during a campaign stop in Las Vegas, where he was asked about the headline on Tuesday’s report in the magazine. It read: “Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had’”
“No, I never said that,” Mr. Trump said. “I would never say that. It’s a rag that he made up stories. He’s done it before. It’s a failing magazine. Right before the election.”
Mr. Trump’s speech in Texas largely focused on immigration, but he also again criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’s appearance on a CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper. During the event, she called Mr. Trump a “fascist.”
“The town hall with Cooper was just unbelievable — Alison Cooper got so angry,” Mr. Trump said. It was likely a purposeful misnaming of Mr. Cooper that caused laughs in the crowd.
Mr. Trump has called Mr. Cooper “Alison Cooper” before. He used the name in a Memorial Day post on social media that mentioned an interview Mr. Cooper did with the writer E. Jean Carroll, who won a civil case against Mr. Trump in which he was found liable for sexual abuse.
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