In The Atlantic’s profile of Gen. Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the general shared an anecdote that serves as a shocking reminder of former President Donald Trump’s disdain for disabled people, even people whose disabilities are the result of their military service. Trump, Milley said, didn’t appreciate Milley’s choice of veteran Luis Avila to sing “God Bless America” during Milley’s welcoming ceremony as chairman. In the course of five combat tours, Avila had lost a leg and suffered brain damage, two heart attacks and two strokes.
In the course of five combat tours in Iraq, Avila had lost a leg and suffered brain damage, two heart attacks and two strokes.
In a report that has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, at that ceremony, Avila’s wheelchair almost toppled over on the rain-softened ground, Milley said, and multiple people intervened to keep him from falling. Trump congratulated Avila after he sang, Milley told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, but then, he said, Trump said loud enough for multiple people to hear, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” According to Milley, Trump told the general to never again let Avila appear in public.
In a 2020 report for The Atlantic, Goldberg quoted sources who said that, while planning a 2018 military parade, Trump wanted wounded veterans excluded because “Nobody wants to see that.” Goldberg also reported that Trump’s decision not to visit American military interred in a French cemetery in 2018 wasn’t because the rain made it unsafe to fly, as Trump claimed, but because the cemetery was “filled with losers,” a claim Trump vehemently denied.
But there’s enough evidence of Trump deriding military heroes and deriding people who are disabled to believe he has little regard for people who are disabled military heroes. For example, in what counts as one of the most deplorable displays by a candidate for U.S. president, in 2015 Trump mocked Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital joint condition that limits movement in his arms.
During that same presidential campaign, Trump said the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who became disabled while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was “not a war hero” because “he was captured.” And The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019, before Trump’s visit Japan that year, that a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command official sent U.S. Navy and Air Force officials an email including the directive that while Trump was there, the “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.”
Trump denied having made a request that the ship be kept out of sight but described whoever made the request as “well meaning” “because they thought I didn’t like” McCain.
In one of the most deplorable displays by a candidate for president, Trump mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital joint condition that limits movement in his arms.
Military veterans are the subset of people with disabilities who tend to earn the most empathy from the American public and from American presidents. Americans elect the leaders who send them to war, that is, on the missions that left them disabled. The thinking is that because America asked these men and women to embark upon missions that left them disabled, America should show them the utmost respect. But, according to Milley, after making a phony show of respect to the wounded Avila, Trump revealed to others the disdain he really has for wounded vets.
Real respect for disabled veterans would come with a commitment to making the country more accessible for them, which would make things more accessible for disabled people with no military service. But the record shows that Trump has some backward ideas about accessibility.
When then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton released an ad that criticized Trump for mocking Kovaleski, Trump responded by saying, “I spend millions a year or millions of dollars on ramps and get rid of the stairs and different kinds of elevators.” He acted as if he were doing some kind of favor for people with disabilities and not simply complying with federal law.
Even before he’d mocked Kovaleski, Trump engaged in blatant ableism. During the second Republican primary debate in 2015, he said “autism has become an epidemic” and said the condition hadn’t been as widespread “25 years ago, 35 years ago” and repeated the debunked claim that vaccinations are to blame. Such ableism has been an enduring feature. During one of the 2020 presidential debates with President Joe Biden, Trump said that his administration had to shut down the economy “because we didn’t know anything about the disease [Covid-19].” But, he said, they “found that elderly people with heart problems and diabetes and different problems are very, very vulnerable.” The implication was that it was fine to return to normal if vulnerable people were most likely to get sick and die. The implication was that it was fine to return to normal if vulnerable people were most likely to get sick and die. Those words showed utter callousness from the then- president who was unwilling to take the measures to protect the most vulnerable Americans from the pandemic. Trump’s ableism should not surprise anyone, especially given his fetishization of strength. But it also reveals something much more pernicious: It shows that in his eyes, being disabled makes a person less worthy and undeserving of being integrated into the larger public. Hence, the report from Milley that Trump wanted Avila kept out of the public. But, as The Atlantic reports, Milley has invited Avila to sing at his retirement ceremony.
Eric Garcia is an author and senior correspondent for The Independent. 
