“Only 13”

A Memorial Day Letter to Everyone Who Still Believes Donald Trump “Loves” Our Troops

Let’s be real: most Americans will not be spending Memorial Day staring wistfully into the middle distance like a Civil War reenactor trapped inside a Ken Burns documentary, quietly communing with history while a fiddle mourns somewhere offscreen. We’ll be dodging sunburns or hypothermia, depending on what fresh meteorological insult the Northeast has decided to inflict, incinerating hot dogs, and praying the cooler has not devolved into a lukewarm swamp before Uncle Gary launches into his annual “I was this close to joining the Navy SEALs” saga despite sounding winded after crossing a parking lot.

The closest many of us will get to solemn reflection is realizing somebody forgot the potato salad in the trunk.

Most people are not saints. They are just grateful for a day off somebody else made possible.

Still, for many of us, somewhere between heat curling off the grill, kids sprinting around in hoodies they swore they did not need, and somebody muttering, “Why the hell is it forty-something degrees in May?” we will actually take a moment to reflect. Maybe it lasts only a second. A flicker. But beneath the haze of charcoal, the laughter, the petty family arguments, and burgers sacrificed to flames in somebody’s overconfident act of backyard masculinity, there is something quieter humming underneath it all: gratitude. A steady awareness that our freedom exists because other people were willing to give more than most of us can even comprehend.

Donald Trump?

He could not find that feeling with both hands, a flashlight, and a motherfucking map.

Draft Houdini bought his way out of Vietnam with a conveniently timed diagnosis and spent decades afterward behaving as though service and sacrifice were punchlines told between golf swings and club-bar cocktails. Bone spurs catastrophic enough to dodge war, apparently, but never severe enough to chase applause, stalk camera angles, or wobble onto stages hawking grievance like discount merchandise.

The contempt was never subtle. Fallen service members reduced to “suckers” and “losers.” Standing amid the sacred stillness of Arlington Cemetery, surrounded by row after row of interrupted lives and grief hardened into white stone, he reportedly asked:

What was in it for them?

What was in it for them.

A moral vacancy so profound it feels like rot learned to speak.

He moves through the world swallowing loyalty and exhaling betrayal, translating sacrifice into transaction, devotion into usefulness, grief into optics. Duty belongs to other people. Consequences belong to other people. Country itself exists only insofar as it reflects admiration back at him.

He dry-humps the flag like a confused poodle at a balloon-animal convention because, to Donald Trump, patriotism has always functioned less like conviction and more like branding. Useful when cameras are rolling. Useful when applause is available. Sacrifice is for somebody else’s kid. Service is for somebody else’s family. Honor is scenery.

And grotesquely, he is never alone.

The Republican bootlickers arrive right on cue, supplicants in suits, flag-swaddled opportunists orbiting their melon-hued messiah, screeching “support the troops” while enabling a man who mocked Gold Star families, demeaned veterans, sneered at service, and treated sacred places like campaign real estate.

They watched him trample hallowed ground and nodded.

Watched him insult grieving families and rationalized it.

Probably drafting another fundraising email about freedom between donor selfies and shrimp cocktails.

Spineless barely covers it. Parasites, really. Conscience-cauterized cowards feeding off borrowed valor while siphoning dignity from institutions they are not fit to steward, much less defend.

And somehow, impossibly, the cult eats it up.

They barrel around town in rusted-out pickups rattling down the road like tetanus with a tailgate, hauling enough battered flags to survive atmospheric reentry, banners so shredded they look like they lost a custody battle with a lawn mower. Somewhere along the way, national pride curdled into a volume contest. A screaming performance by people who mistake devotion to America for rage accessorized in polyester and diesel fumes.

These freedom-fossilized, grievance-guzzling fucknuts seem convinced stapling a flag to the truck bed magically compensates for never cracking open the Constitution, or frankly, a book with chapters. Half of them treat constitutional literacy like a woke side effect of fluoride.

They treat Old Glory like a mud flap.

Wave it. Wear it. Weaponize it.

Anything except understand it.

Because to them, loving America apparently means blasting Kid Rock, screaming at strangers, and treating civic literacy like an elitist conspiracy.

Newsflash: loving your country is not turning the flag into roadside upholstery while bellowing brainless garbage at anybody who disagrees with you.

Love of country is not performance.

It is stewardship.

Sacrifice.

Duty.

Memorial Day is not for grifters, narcissists, wannabe despots, or moral pickpockets cosplaying devotion between rounds of self-worship.

It belongs to the ones who earned remembrance.

The men and women who gave everything.

The families carrying losses so immense language barely reaches them.

The lifers who served quietly, asked for nothing, and somehow still managed to embody a sense of duty so much larger than slogans, so much deeper than pageantry, that it exposes people like Trump for what they are: loud, theatrical counterfeits draped in symbols they never bothered to understand.

So spare me the slogans.

Spare me the theatrics.

Spare me the flag-waving mountebanks pretending reverence while kneeling before a man who would not recognize honor if it punched through three layers of bronzer and grabbed him by his fatty neck flaps.

I’m here to honor the people who carried the actual weight of this country.

The soldiers.

The families.

The people who knew freedom came with a cost and paid it anyway.

And maybe that is what keeps scraping at me every Memorial Day while the same smooth-brained ammosexuals wrap themselves in star-spangled Snuggies, spit chewing tobacco into gas station parking lots, and holler “THESE COLORS DON’T BLEED” like volume itself is a substitute for thought, responsibility, or basic reading comprehension.

Because if we are finally going to stop confusing amnesia with devotion to country, if we are actually going to speak honestly about what loving America looks like, then I have a question for the freedom-fried fuckwits still out here insisting Donald Trump “loves our troops.”

What exactly are you honoring when you kneel at the altar of a man who has spent his life sneering at sacrifice?

What precisely have you mistaken for love of country?

Dear Ma & Pa MAGA,

You say that Donald Trump “loves our troops.”

So, once again, I want to know why that is.

Is it because he received five deferments for a fake medical condition from the draft during the Vietnam War?

Or is it the time he bragged that “avoiding STDs” was his personal equivalent of military combat?

Is it because he demeaned a POW, attacked a Gold Star family, and told a military widow that her deceased husband “knew what he had signed up for”?

Was it the time he downplayed the traumatic head injuries suffered by our troops after a missile attack as “not real” because they were not “missing hands and limbs”?

Is it the time he said he did not want to be seen with war-wounded amputees and wanted them forever out of his sight, or the time he called our fallen heroes of war “suckers” and “losers”?

Was it the time he skipped an event in France honoring our Marines because it was raining?

Is it all the times he called our military leaders “dumb” and “overrated” while calling terrorists like the Taliban and Hezbollah “very smart”?

Was it the time he demanded the flags after McCain’s death be returned to full mast, or the time he demanded that a ship bearing his name be blocked from view?

Was it when he suggested that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff deserved to be executed?

Maybe it was when he asked Gen. John Kelly, a man who lost his son in combat, why anyone would sign up for service because, as far as he saw it, there was “nothing in it for them.”

Perhaps it was hearing him say that, as president, he would allow our adversaries to attack the same allies this country’s Greatest Generation fought beside and died defending?

Or was it when he insulted Nikki Haley’s husband for currently serving our country overseas?

Was it when he said the Medal of Freedom he handed to rich donors was “much better” than the Medal of Honor because the recipients of that honor are “in bad shape or dead”?

Was it when he insisted on using the sacred shrine that is Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place for more than 400,000 veterans and their families, as a photo op for his campaign despite the fact that he was not allowed to do so and officials there were reportedly attacked by staff for trying to stop him?

Was it when he decimated the VA and gutted a suicide prevention hotline meant to help our veterans in their darkest hour?

Is it the fact that he has fired more veterans than any other president in our history?

Or was it when he skipped the dignified transfer of the four soldiers who died in Lithuania so he could host a glittery gala at his gilded golf motel for the folks who funded 9/11?

Was it the time he droned on about “trophy wives” while wearing a MAGA hat at a West Point graduation?

Or the time he talked about the “Olympics” and the “World Cup” on Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery?

Or was it when he called for the execution of several Democratic lawmakers because they made a video reminding service members to refuse unlawful orders?

Which of those things makes you believe he loves our troops?

Which one?

Because now he says he gets “a kick” out of people talking about the 13 service members who died.

“A kick.”

And then, as if thirteen grieving families somehow amounted to rounding error, he said:

“Only 13.”

Only 13.

Because apparently the man who promised you he would end ALL FOREIGN WARS, who swore he would stop wasting American lives overseas, now wants you to shrug while American troops die in a war he never justified, never explained, never sought Congressional approval for, and still has no plan to extract us from.

The guy who PROMISED you he was the one to end ALL FOREIGN WARS is using OUR troops as props in a deadly game that is undoubtedly lining HIS pockets while making all of us far less safe at the same damn time.

And I just do not understand how you do not see how grotesque that is.

So what is it?

Because for the life of me, I cannot figure it out.

And I would really, really love to know.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys!

Stay safe, stay strong, stay connected to each other and enjoy your long weekend!!

💙 Jo

Finally — a quote from a REAL President:

“On Memorial Day, we honor the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. We owe them so much, and their memories will never be forgotten.”

President Barack Obama 🇺🇸