Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton attacked President Donald Trump on Sunday, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump “is not a patriot.”
Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, argued during a segment on “State of the Union” that opponents should attack the president on his performance as commander-in-chief because that was where he’s weakest. (RELATED: Congressman Who Wanted To Oust Pelosi Wants To Take On Trump In 2020)
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“I think we need to take on Donald Trump, not just in his job as president, but his job as commander-in-chief,” Moulton began. “That’s where he’s weaker. Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President Bush, just wrote in The Washington Post it, was written that we need to question Trump’s patriotism. He’s not a patriot.”
Tapper stopped Moulton there, asking, “You don’t think he loves this country?”
Moulton went on to outline his case against Trump, beginning with Russia and apparently referring to the rally during which Trump — who was reportedly joking at the time — asked Russia if they could find former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.
“I don’t think that someone who encourages our greatest adversary of the last 70 years, Russia, the only country on Earth that could wipe out every American life in about 20 minutes, I don’t think a president who encourages Russia to attack us as he did during the campaign,” Moulton said.
“I don’t think a president who disparages American heroes like John McCain and Captain Khan, I don’t think a president who cozies up to Kim Jong-Un and sells out South Korea, I don’t think that’s a president who embodies patriotism,” the Massachusetts congressman continued.
“Patriotism is being willing to stand up and serve your country,” Moulton concluded, referencing former President John F. Kennedy. “JFK used his father’s connections to get a medical — to get medically cleared to deploy. Trump used his father’s connections to get a doctor to lie about bone spurs so he could stay home. I would like to meet the American hero that went to Vietnam in his place someday.”
The New York Times reported in December that the daughters of Trump’s podiatrist claimed the bone spurs diagnosis was given as a favor to the president’s father, who owned the building where his office was. Dr. Larry Braunstein passed away in 2007, however, and the outlet was not able to come up with any documentation indicating that the diagnosis was inaccurate.