Fact Check: Democrats Repeat ‘Suckers’ and ‘Losers’ Hoax at DNC

Senator from Arizona Mark Kelly speaks on the fourth and last day of the Democratic Nation
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Elizabeth Weibel

CLAIM: Democrats speaking at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) repeated a debunked claim that former President Donald Trump labeled men and women serving in the military as “suckers” and “losers.”

VERDICT: FALSE. This hoax originated from an article published by the Atlantic in September 2020, using anonymous sources, and has been debunked.

While speaking at the convention on Thursday night, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) claimed that Trump had labeled the men and women serving in the United States military as “suckers and losers.”

“Trump thinks that Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice are suckers and losers,” Kelly told the crowd. “If we fall for that again and make him the commander-in-chief, the only suckers would be us.”

The “suckers and losers” hoax was also repeated by former Defense Secretary and former CIA Director Leon Panetta.

“Donald Trump does not understand the world, and he does not understand the service and sacrifice of our military,” Panetta told the crowd. “Our fallen veterans are not suckers, they are not losers. They are our heroes. Kamala Harris will honor our veterans, and in Tim Walz, we will have a vice president who has served in uniform honorably for 24 years.”

Panetta has previously admitted that he does not regret signing a 2020 letter “that incorrectly” alleged that the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was misinformation.

The Atlantic claimed in a story from September 2020, that Trump had refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, and asked senior staff members, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers”:

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why shoud I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,8000 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Trump criticized the outlet after the article was released, calling it a “disgraceful situation by a magazine” to claim that he “would make statements negative to our military” and “fallen heroes.”

“To think that I would make statements negative to our military and our fallen heroes… it is a disgraceful situation by a magazine that’s a terrible magazine,” Trump said in a statement at the time. “I don’t read it, but I just heard about it.”

Despite this claim being debunked, Democrats such as former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden have repeated this claim.

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