Hating the troops
By 
The conditions for members of the Navy on long deployments for Trump’s counterproductive war remain dire:
Families are coming forward with reports about poor conditions their relatives are facing on U.S. military ships after the Trump administration tried to downplay initial reports from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
One mother told journalist Jim Acosta that her son, a sailor aboard the USS Tripoli, is dealing with low food and hygiene supplies, losing more than 30 pounds in just four months.
Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego rebuked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over his dismissal of conditions aboard the Abraham Lincoln, saying Thursday that he was communicating with a military spouse who was forwarding her husband’s text messages.
“Stop lying and fix the problem,” Gallego admonished Hegseth.
The Abraham Lincoln is experiencing multiple issues, including plumbing problems, disruptions with mail delivery, food shortages, and supply shortages, straining the discipline and mental health of sailors on board the ship to the point that some have tried to jump off. One military wife, whose husband jumped overboard, told MS NOW Thursday that her spouse was in the water for about an hour before he was rescued, and she wasn’t told about the incident until four days later.
Don’t worry, though, I’m sure these issues will be addressed with Trump’s trademark empathy and concern for the well-being of people making sacrifices on his behalf:
President Donald Trump appeared to dismiss the concerns of military families about worsening conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea that has been deployed since November.
When a reporter prefaced a question to Trump by saying that families are concerned about the conditions on the ship, he responded, “No, they’re not.”
“That ship is moving right now or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with a very similar ship,” he said.
Pressed on whether the ship’s deployment — which has lasted nearly nine months — had gone on too long, Trump responded that it was “not nearly long enough.”
As always, it’s trite to imagine what the reaction would be if a Democratic president said anything like this, but we all know it would dominate the news for weeks.