You really do not hate journalists enough.
Some guy named Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic recently shoveled out another Trump Derangement Syndrome screed, claiming Le Bad Orange Man got angry at the bill for a deceased soldier's funeral that he offered to pay for back in 2020, which reportedly cost $60,000.
For additional context: Spc. Vanessa Guillén was murdered in Fort Hood, Texas, by a fellow soldier in April of 2020. Ryan McCarthy, who was Secretary of the Army at the time, investigated her murder. President Trump expressed his condolences to the family and hosted them at the White House, offering to pay for the funeral.
Here is where the story starts sounding like it was made up:
In an Oval Office meeting on December 4, 2020, officials gathered to discuss a separate national-security issue. Toward the end of the discussion, Trump asked for an update on the McCarthy investigation. Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense (Trump had fired his predecessor, Mark Esper, three weeks earlier, writing in a tweet, “Mark Esper has been terminated”), was in attendance, along with Miller’s chief of staff, Kash Patel. At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”
According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.
Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f***ing Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “F***ing people, trying to rip me off.”
Everything about this conforms perfectly to every falsehood about Trump that the left has been screeching about ever since he descended the golden escalator in 2015 to announce his presidential campaign:
Disdain for the military? Check. Greed? Check. Disparaging remarks about Latino people? Check. Anonymous sources? Check, check, and check (one for each supposed attendant of this meeting).
Goldberg at least had the honesty (shocking, I know) to say that Trump spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer denied that this event happened, saying, "President Donald Trump never said that. This is an outrageous lie from The Atlantic two weeks before the election."
Even Mayra Guillén, Vanessa's sister, had this to say on X:
Wow.
— Mayra Guillen (@mguilen_) October 22, 2024
I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today. https://t.co/o8cDrKOKBV
Mark Meadows, Trump's Chief of Staff at the time, is also calling the story fake, saying he was in the room when this "incident" happened:
I was in the discussions featured in the Atlantic’s latest hit piece against President Trump. Let me say this.
— Mark Meadows (@MarkMeadows) October 22, 2024
Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false.
He was nothing but kind, gracious, and…
Yet Goldberg continues treating this incident as fact for the rest of the article, using it to somehow prove that Trump will be a dictator upon his return to the White House and "wants generals like Hitler had" (another comment Trump supposedly made).
And then these people wonder why nobody trusts the mainstream media anymore.
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