President Trump blames Secret Service for not visiting graves of U.S. soldiers in France
Why blame it on the rain when you can throw the Secret Service under the bus.
President Trump is pushing back against criticism he faced over the weekend for skipping a memorial marking the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War because of bad weather.
Trump tweeted Tuesday that the Secret Service shot down his idea to drive to the Aisle-Marne American Cemetery outside of Paris after his helicopter was grounded due to low visibility.
“By the way, when the helicopter couldn’t fly to the first cemetery in France because of almost zero visibility, I suggested driving,” he wrote. “Secret Service said NO, too far from airport & big Paris shutdown.”
He went on to misspell cemetery as he blasted the media for covering his decision to stay inside Saturday.
“Speech next day at American Cemetary in pouring rain! Little reported-Fake News!” he added.
Other leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau all made Saturday trips to memorials and cemeteries despite the weather.
The decision to skip the visit, coupled with Trump’s complaints about the rain during a speech to veterans and his choice to take a private motorcade through the Champs-Élysées over walking hand-in-hand with other world leaders to the Arc de Triomph on Sunday, cast a shadow over the President’s Paris trip.
In a late Sunday statement, Sanders said driving Trump out to the Aisne-Marne memorial on Saturday would have required closing “substantial portions of the Paris roadways ... on short notice,” and the President didn't want to “cause that kind of unexpected disruption to the city and its people.”
After returning to Washington, Trump spent Monday at the White House and did not visit Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia, a tradition which most commanders-in-chief take part in to honor American troops on Veterans Day.
The President spent his free time Tuesday morning lashing out at Macron, slamming the him for having a “very low Approval Rating” and mocking France’s defeat at the hands of Germany during World War II.
"Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two - How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along,” Trump tweeted.
Macron drew Trump’s ire over the weekend by appearing to take a swipe at at the President in a speech on Sunday in which he called nationalism “a betrayal of patriotism.”
Trump has recently embraced the term and declared himself a nationalist — claiming he was unaware the term carried racist connotations and associations with the rise of Nazis in Germany.
