A story broke late yesterday from The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, which alleges that President Trump referred to dead troops buried in France as “losers.”

Let’s look at the facts, and then make a decision on whether or not this allegation can be backed up. Lay aside your visceral reactions, and if we can dispassionately view the evidence of this claim, then the truth may become clear.

Claim #1: The Atlantic alleges that President Trump did not want to go to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris when he was there in 2018. They acknowledge that the official explanation had to do with bad weather. This was a big story at the time, as many wanted to know at the time why the president did not go to the cemetery. The contemporary reports of the time – including an email from the White House, and the much-lauded-by-the-left John Bolton memoir – note that the weather was the culprit. Bolton himself – not exactly Trump’s biggest cheerleader anymore – even went ON THE RECORD to confirm this.

“It was a straight weather call,” Mr. Bolton tell @peterbakernyt @maggieNYT https://t.co/qB2OobRMZK

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 4, 2020

The reasonable conclusion, given the contemporaneous evidence, is that the weather was the overriding reason that President Trump did not go to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in 2018.

Claim #2: The Atlantic says that President Trump verbally disparaged the servicemembers who were buried at the cemetery, calling them “losers” and “suckers.” For this evidence, they produce “multiple” unnamed sources. Why are they not going on the record? Well, Jeffrey Goldberg says… wait for it… they don’t want any mean tweets.

“We think our story is important enough to get there.. but not important enough to put our names by it” is the challenge here. https://t.co/fWZhgVrllL

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) September 4, 2020

Journalists who really want this story to be true are acknowledging that the anonymous sources are a problem, and yet Jeffrey Goldberg should get a pass because he’s so upstandingly fair. Let’s not even consider that The Atlantic didn’t have to massively overhaul a fake news story just this last July, or that Goldberg himself caved to a writers’ revolt when they didn’t want Kevin Williamson writing with them.

Given the “unnamed” sources aspect, countered with sources who WERE willing to go on the record, this story cannot be given credibility until someone with enough balls to stand up to mean tweets is willing to put themselves out there.

Claim #3: President Trump disparaged John McCain. This seems to be a case of mixing in a truth so that the lies will be a little easier to swallow. It is no secret that President Trump and John McCain had plenty of personal animosity, which did not seem to end with the senator’s death. To drag out this story in order to lend more credence to Trump’s alleged other statements about dead and living servicemembers is disingenuous at best.

While the claim that Trump and McCain feuded publicly is true, that one example cannot prove the entire premise.

It is fair to say that the facts as we currently have them do not support The Atlantic‘s story – especially given Goldberg’s rather pathetic excuse for not getting his sources on the record. That’s an automatic F in journalism school. But in the age of Orange Man Bad, anything goes if it makes Trump look bad.

The other part of this that stinks? It looks like Team Biden was ready for this story to drop. The Biden campaign got some tried and true Democrat supporters with military credentials to be ready to talk about how much they loathe Donald Trump. My, that happened fast. Almost as if this was preplanned.

The Biden campaign is holding a press call this morning with Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Khizr Khan, and Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) “in reaction to the appalling revelations about Donald Trump and veterans” in @JeffreyGoldberg’s @TheAtlantic story.

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) September 4, 2020

They even had an ad ready to roll via the VoteVets group.

How did this very pro-Democrats, very anti-Trump PAC know to have this ad ready, complete with quotes from The Atlantic piece, within hours of the article’s publication? They claim that they started production “an hour after” the story was published. And they just happened to have all these Gold Star families on speed dial for quick video clips, along with images of their loved lost ones, to condemn Donald Trump – one of which looks to have been filmed indoors, with quite a lot of daylight. Consider that The Atlantic piece, per the VoteVets video, was published at 5:32 pm Eastern Time. Now, sunlight is still a possibility if they started an hour after the piece dropped, and depending on the time zones involved, there could still have been plenty of daylight. VoteVets tweeted out their ad at 3:04 am Eastern Time. So I will leave it to each person’s judgement if this ad was slapped together at a moment’s notice and rushed out, or not.

Meanwhile, Biden is getting softballs from the media. Now that the shiny new object has been found, the media are allowed to avoid reporting on Biden’s Kenosha visit disaster. Hey Grandpa Joe, please tell us how bad the Orange Man is, please.

first question at Biden's press event came from the Atlantic’s @IsaacDovere, who asked Biden to respond to a report by the Atlantic. https://t.co/ZwH4pXHZOL

— tsar becket adams (@BecketAdams) September 4, 2020

So, dear readers, I leave this decision to you. Look at the evidence, who went on the record, who did not, and how the media is reacting. Was this story real? Or was this a coordinated hit job? It’s your call.

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