Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, on Monday criticized the Trump family for a “tone-deafness” about what it means to serve in the military.
Rieckhoff was asked about a passage in Donald Trump Jr.’s new book in which he said a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery prompted him to reflect on the “sacrifices” his family made so that his father could become president.
{mosads}“I mean, every week there’s something new like this. There’s a tone-deafness from the president and from his family around what it means to serve,” Rieckhoff said in an interview with CNN.
“Don Jr. is of age. If he really wants to understand what sacrifice is all about, he can join the military,” he continued. “You know, folks like Sean Spicer and others have done it. Reince Priebus just joined the military.”
Spicer is a former White House press secretary, while Priebus was Trump’s first chief of staff.
“There are plenty of ways you can serve your country but you gotta understand the cultural competency and understand what the military community is really all about and comparing that to dead people at Arlington is ridiculous,” Rieckhoff, an Army veteran who served in the Iraq War, added. “And unfortunately, that’s the kind of tone that’s permeated the last three years of this administration time and time again. They hit political guardrails that they shouldn’t hit.
In “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us,” Trump Jr. wrote about going to Arlington National Cemetery with his family before his father’s inauguration in 2017.
During the trip, then-President-elect Trump paid respects to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. While an Army Band bugler played “Taps” in front of the tomb during the visit, Trump Jr. wrote that he reflected on some of the sacrifices his family made so that his father could become president.
“In that moment, I also thought of all the attacks we’d already suffered as a family, and about all the sacrifices we’d have to make to help my father succeed — voluntarily giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals to avoid the appearance that we were ‘profiting off the office,’” Trump Jr. wrote.
His comments have sparked backlash from a number of veterans, including Khizr Khan, the father of a soldier who was killed in the Iraq War in 2004.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Kendis Gibson on Sunday, Khan, a vocal critic of the Trump administration, said that the Trump family has “no idea what service and sacrifice is. When his turn, meaning Donald Trump’s turn, came to serve, he ran away.”