Biden To Visit WWI Cemetery Five Years After Trump Refused To Honor ‘Suckers’ And ‘Losers’

Trump skipped a visit to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside Paris in 2018 because it was raining and instead stayed indoors and tweeted all afternoon.

President Joe Biden on Sunday is set to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, the burial place for 1,800 U.S. Marines, whom Donald Trump famously called “suckers” and “losers” and had refused to honor with a visit in 2018 because it had been raining.

Trump, president at the time, had been scheduled to visit the cemetery about 60 miles from Paris but canceled because of the rain. He told his then-chief of staff John Kelly: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” Later on the same trip, he called servicemembers who died for their country “suckers.”

Kelly, a retired Marine general whose son, also a Marine, died in Afghanistan, went to the cemetery in Trump’s place. Photos from the visit show no rain falling as he walked amid the gravestones.

It’s unclear whether Biden will mention Trump’s failure to pay his respects at the cemetery, which largely holds the remains of Marines and Army soldiers killed in the key World War I Battle of Belleau Wood, during Biden’s own visit there Sunday. The president has been in France since Wednesday for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion in Normandy that brought on the collapse of Nazi Germany.

Still, Biden has been using Trump’s “suckers” and “losers” comments against the coup-attempting former president now for months in campaign appearances, arguing that a person who believes such a thing has no business being commander-in-chief.