Joy Reid talked about Trump's obvious reluctance to visit the troops in war zones.
"He was never interested in going, according to this official. He's afraid of those situations. He's afraid people might want to kill him. Will, a president that's traveling has the best security on earth. but he's afraid to go," she said to VoteVets spokesman Will Fischer.
"Joy, Donald Trump has been avoiding combat zones since the mid 1960s," he said bluntly. "This recent attack leveled against the military by the president is just a continuation of a theme that we have seen going back in the campaign. Whether it's Donald Trump comparing his sex life in the '80s to serving in Vietnam, whether it was attacking Gold Star families as a candidate and then again as president, or whether it's something like turning over the future of our VA healthcare system to a couple of his country club buddies to try to manage between rounds of golf and over shrimp cocktail. At the end of the day, Donald Trump used the military as nothing more than political props to try and advance his own racist nativist backwards agenda."
"Malcolm, Donald Trump tried to explain why he didn't go to Arlington Cemetery as presidents always do around Veterans Day. Here he is on Fox News Sunday, explaining not going," Reid said.
CHRIS WALLACE: You're back in Washington on Monday. Veterans day. Why don't you go across the river to Arlington for that ceremony? President Obama went every year he was here in D.C.
TRUMP: I should have done that. I was extremely busy on calls for the country. We did a lot of calling, as you know.
WALLACE: This is Veterans Day.
TRUMP: I probably, you know, in retrospect I should have. I did last year. I will virtually every year. But we had come in very late at night. and i had just left literally the American cemetery in Paris and I really probably assumed that was fine. I was extremely busy because of affairs of state, doing other things.
WALLACE: Why --
TRUMP: I would have done it.
"Malcolm, he was not extremely busy. Can we put up his public schedule? On Veterans Day? There it is. Nothing. Nothing on his public schedule. It's highlighted there. He's extremely busy. Troops don't get to say I thought it was enough that we did some combat yesterday. This is really odd," Reid said.
"It's not odd. Let's just call it what it is," Malcolm Nance said.
"Donald Trump is a physical coward. He dodged the draft five times. No one in his family served. Every male in my family since the Civil War has served. Let me tell you something, he is frightened of facing the situation that it will be made clear if he goes to these military cemeteries, if he goes to these memorial ceremonies other than giving out the Medal of Honor ones, because they come to the White House, that he will be reminded of his own cowardice.
"There's nothing more. He is a disgrace. He's not commander in chief, he's placeholder in chief. I have relatives who have dead comrades in Paris. Donald Trump wouldn't even deign to go to one because he was afraid of the rain. So for him to back out of going to Arlington -- let me give him directions. Go around the ellipse, past the World War II memorial, turn right, drive straight. That's all it takes for him to do it. He does not want to be reminded of the fact that he's incapable of being brave and serving the nation, he is exploiting the nation."
