Three Democratic presidential candidates who all served in Iraq or Afghanistan used the Memorial Day weekend to target President Donald Trump’s lack of service during Vietnam.
The criticism of Trump, who escaped service by claiming he had bone spurs in his feet, came as the president was on a high-profile trip overseas, traveling in Japan, The Washington Post noted.
Trump himself has come under fire for his criticism of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, while he was on foreign soil, breaking with long-standing tradition of leaving domestic politcs at the water's edge. But Biden himself was critical of Trump in an overseas trip earlier this year. In a Feb. 16 trip to Germany, Biden called Trump's immigration policy "an embarrassment."
“We’ve had presidents who were immoral, backwards and had terrible policies,” Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. — who served as a Marine in Iraq — told CNN on Sunday night, questioning Trump’s patriotism for siding with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un over former Vice President Joe Biden.
“We’ve had presidents who were criminals. I don’t think we’ve ever had a president who is so fundamentally unpatriotic. Even Richard Nixon served his country and was proud to do so.
“This president is much more interested in siding with dictators, if it’s good for his ratings. And that’s pretty pathetic for the commander in chief.”
In a separate interview on MSNBC, he also charged that Trump “used his father’s connections to get medically cleared when he probably shouldn’t have been cleared.”
“I don’t think that lying to get out of serving your country is patriotic,” he said. “It’s not like there was just some empty seat in Vietnam. Someone had to go in his place. I’d like to meet the American hero who went in Donald Trump’s place to Vietnam. I hope he’s still alive.”
At a Washington Post Live event Thursday, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., who was a Navy Reserve lieutenant in Afghanistan, accused Trump of faking a disability to avoid service.
“If he were a conscientious objector, I'd admire that,” he said. “But this is somebody who, I think it’s fairly obvious to most of us, took advantage of the fact that he was a child of a multimillionaire in order to pretend to be disabled so that somebody could go to war in his place.... I think it deserves to be talked about.”
And when pressed on the comment on ABC News’ “This Week,” on Sunday, Buttigieg doubled down.
“You have somebody who thinks it's all right to let somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled in order to do it,” he said. “That is an assault on the honor of this country.”
On Memorial Day, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, who served in her state’s Army National Guard in Iraq, pressed the same theme on Memorial Day, ABC News reported.
“Memorial Day is a time to remember that war should only be waged as a very last resort to keep the American people safe,” she said.
“So nothing angers me more than the hypocrisy exhibited every Memorial Day by warmongering politicians and media pundits feigning sympathy for those who paid the ultimate price in service to our country, while simultaneously advocating for more counterproductive regime change wars and the new Cold War and arms race.”
Kayleigh McEnany, a spokeswoman for Trump’s re-election campaign, refuted the attacks.
“These baseless attacks from 2020 Democrats are rooted in desperation,” she said, the Post reported. “As commander in chief, President Trump has the utmost respect for the sacrifice our military men and women have made to keep our nation safe.”
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.