Joe Biden and Donald Trump sparred over the reports about the former president privately calling dead soldiers “losers” and “suckers.”
Biden took issue with Trump attempting to criticize him on veteran affairs. “Every single thing he said is a lie, every single one,” Biden said. “For example, veterans are a hell of a lot better off since I passed the PACT Act. One million of them now have insurance, and their families have it. Their families have it because what happened — whether it was Agent Orange or burn pits — they’re all being covered now. And his group opposed that.”
“We’re also in a situation where we have great respect for veterans. My son spent a year in Iraq, living right next to one of those burn pits, came back with stage four glioblastoma. I was recently in France for D-Day, and I spoke all about those heroes that died. I went to the World War II cemetery, World War I cemetery he refused to go to,” the president continued. “He was standing with his four-star general, and … he said, 'I don’t want to go in there because they’re a bunch of losers and suckers.'”
“My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You're the sucker, you're the loser,” Biden shot over at Trump.
Trump responded, saying, “that was a made-up quote.”
The “losers” and “suckers” quote originates from an article from The Atlantic published in 2020, which relief on anonymous sources. However, many of the accounts have been corroborated by news outlets like the New York Times and by Trump’s White House Chief of Staff John Kelly — the retired “four-star general” Biden was referring to.