'Last straw': Conservative vet says Trump's Arlington stunt cost him his support
A veteran who in the past has supported Republican presidential candidates has officially had it with former President Donald Trump.
In an interview with UK-based The Times, Wayne Collins revealed that he reached his "final straw" in recent weeks when Trump filmed a campaign video at Arlington National Cemetery and when one of Trump's staffers reportedly got into an altercation with a staffer at the cemetery who tried to stop them from using the area for campaign purposes.
“I don’t think he was respectful and that’s because fundamentally I don’t think he has respect for the military,” said Collins, who will be voting for Democrat Kamala Harris this fall. “He doesn’t value the lives of people he would be sending to the front, and that should in itself be disqualifying.”
Collins also expressed fears about what Trump would do were he to get a second term in the White House with few if any constraints on his actions.
“He’s made it clear there is nothing he wouldn’t do to retain power, from saying he will cancel future elections to firing ‘woke’ generals,” he said. “If he gets to the White House this vote could be our last.”
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Fred Wellman, a U.S. army combat veteran with VoteVets who voted for Republicans until Trump's emergence in 2016, told The Times that the former president's behavior at Arlington caught the attention of fellow veterans who otherwise stayed away from politics.
“The Arlington debacle was different,” Wellman explained to the paper. “Even my non card-carrying vet friends who water-ski on weekends rather than pay attention to politics were deeply offended. Arlington is sacred.”