A mid-morning missive on his Truth Social platform exclusively focused on those leading the civil and criminal prosecutions against him in New York state.
Antonio FinsPalm Beach Post
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On a solemn day of remembrance and honoring the nation's fallen heroes, former President Donald Trump posted rival messages honoring America's military war dead and wishing a "Happy Memorial Day to All," including, he wrote, "the Human Scum" involved in his New York legal cases.
A lengthy mid-morning missive on his Truth Social platform focused exclusively on his court battles, primarily in New York state.
The post took aim at the proceedings by a writer who won a sexual assault and defamation civil case against Trump as well as the business fraud case brought by the New York attorney general that has resulted in an almost $500 million judgment against him, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric and the family empire, the Trump Organization.
It also included a swipe at the judge presiding over the ongoing criminal case against him in Manhattan, in which closing arguments are expected to begin on Tuesday.
Trump also pinned to his Truth Social account a photo of him at attention and saluting at a war memorial with the following quote: "We can never replace the, We can never repay them. But we can always remember. Today, that is what we are doing — we remember."
Trump's dual messaging contrasted with other expressions of remembrance.
U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a West Palm Beach Democrat whose district includes Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, issued a message of gratitude and respect on X, formerly Twitter.
"I’m grateful every day that my son returned home safely from two deployments, but not all families can be so lucky," she wrote about her son, who served in the U.S. Marines. "On this Memorial Day, we honor those servicemembers who gave their lives defending our freedoms, and we keep their loved ones in our thoughts."
At Arlington National Cemetery, President Joe Biden said every fallen American service member is "a link in the chain of honor stretching back to our founding days. Each one bound by common commitment — not to a place, not to a person, not to a President, but to an idea unlike any idea in human history: the idea of the United States of America."
He also reflected on the loss of his own son, Beau, a U.S. Army veteran who died in 2015 from cancer the president explained was contracted from his proximity to a toxic burn pit while serving in Iraq.
"And as it is for so many of you, the pain of his loss is with me every day, as it is with you -- still sharp, still clear," Biden said. "But so is the pride I feel in his service, as if I can still hear him saying, 'It’s my duty, Dad. It’s my duty.' "
The 2024 presumptive Republican nominee's Memorial Day messages also drew attention as his reverence of U.S military casualties has been called into question in the past.
Last fall, former White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed in a statement that then-President Trump disparaged American service members and veterans.
"A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,'" wrote Kelly, a retired four-star general whose son was killed in combat in Afghanistan. "A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
Trump has denied the claim. And he rifled off a scathing attack on Kelly on social media after the general issued his statement.
“John Kelly, by far the dumbest of my Military people, just picked up the theme of the Radical Left’s lying about Gold Star Families and Soldiers, in his hatred of me,” Trump wrote. “He was incapable of doing a good job, it was too much for him, and I couldn’t stand the guy, so I fired him like a ‘dog.'”
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editoratThe Palm Beach Post, part of theUSA TODAY Florida Network.You can reach him atafins@pbpost.com.Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
