President Trump canceled a planned 2018 trip to a cemetery for American war dead in France because of the weather and not because of disdain for the slain soldiers who are buried there or concern about how the weather would affect his hair, two sources told Fox News, despite a report from The Atlantic making that claim.
Still, the details from that trip and other events described in the explosive piece remain a subject of dispute.
Two sources who were on the trip in question with Trump refuted the main thesis of The Atlantic’s reporting — that Trump canceled a trip to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, which is at the site of Belleau Wood, an important World War I battle, because he believed the dead soldiers to be “losers.”
The White House had said at the time the decision was made because of poor weather for flying Marine One and the fact that the cemetery was too far a distance for a motorcade to drive.
One of the sources who refuted the Atlantic’s reporting is not a fan of Trump. Both sources said that Trump was upset about not being able to go to Aisne-Marne and said they had never heard Trump refer to war dead at Aisne-Marne or in the battle of Bellau Wood as “losers” or “suckers.”
Both sources also noted that Trump was not worried about how the weather would affect his hair, as The Atlantic reported. Trump the next day stood in the rain for an hour at a different event.
The sources only rejected the claim about Aisne-Marne, and not other accounts where Trump is alleged to have insulted soldiers. Trump has previously gone after the late Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
But a former senior Trump administration official who was in France traveling with the president in November 2018 did confirm other details surrounding that trip, and had a different account of the canceled cemetery visit.
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