Trump Keeps Press Away From Dignified Transfer But Posts Pics On Social Media

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. – Hours after barring the news media from witnessing the return of six service members killed in Donald Trump’s Iran war, his White House posted images from the service on social media, including several showing the transfer case of at least one of the bodies.

One of the photos posted to X shows Trump at the “dignified transfer,” as the military calls them, with the forward part of the flag-draped case visible as airmen carried it off the C-17 transport plane. In two others posted to the White House Flickr account, a transfer case is visible as airmen load it into a van.

The press pool covering the event Wednesday was told that the families of the six Air Force crew members who died when their KC-135 refueling tanker crashed in Iraq did not want press coverage.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told HuffPost Thursday, “The families did not agree to press. They agreed to official photography.”

Leavitt did not respond to a follow-up question asking whether the families had been informed that the photos would be posted on social media rather than kept for archival purposes, as is the case with the vast majority of photos taken by White House photographers.

At the previous dignified transfer he attended on March 8, Trump wore a white campaign baseball cap during the service — a souvenir that his family business sells on its website for $55 plus $9.99 for shipping.

“Absolutely disgusting,” said Fred Wellman, a former Army helicopter pilot and now a Democratic candidate for Congress in Missouri. “I don’t know of any veterans who have been OK with it.”

Trump then used a photo from that service, which included a transfer case of one of the soldiers who died in the first hours of his Iran war, in a fundraising email for his leadership PAC, in which he promised donors his “private national security briefings, unfiltered updates on the threats facing America.”

Those who click on the links, however, are instead taken to a donation page for Never Surrender Inc., Trump’s “leadership” political action committee — a virtually unregulated political group, effectively a slush fund Trump can use however he wants. There is no mention of national security briefings on the donation page.

Trump himself defended that image and email. When asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One on Sunday if the email was appropriate, Trump said: “I do. I mean, I didn’t see it. Somebody puts it out. We have a lot of people working for us, but there’s nobody that’s better to the military than me, and all you have to do, look at the election. Look at the election results. Look at the kind of votes that we get. Look at the poll numbers. There’s nobody that has ever been higher as a president than me with the military.”

That solicitation drew the ire of Democratic senators in a hearing on Wednesday.

“The American people need to know that the president of the United States is fundraising for his political campaign and his PAC using images of American service members killed in action and it’s a disgrace,” said Georgia’s Jon Ossoff.

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly grilled CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard: “Do you think the public, supporters of the president, should be able to pay and receive his private national security briefings?”

Both said they were unaware of the fundraising email.

“I wouldn’t have worn it,” Kelly, a former astronaut, Navy pilot and combat veteran, said of Trump’s ball cap Thursday. “What’s worse is that he used that picture of a solemn moment to raise money for his campaign. But I don’t expect a lot from a president who continuously disrespects service members and doesn’t understand the sacrifices they make.”

So far, Trump does not appear to have used images from Wednesday’s trip to Dover in any new fundraising solicitations. In that visit, Trump did not wear a hat or cap of any kind, and instead appeared with his hair blowing in the breeze.

Trump personally avoided military service in Vietnam by claiming “bone spurs” on his heels, a diagnosis he received from a physician friend of his father. He later joked that he considered the risk of catching sexually transmitted diseases his “personal Vietnam” and thought of himself as “a great and very brave soldier.”

As president, Trump in his first term refused to travel to a French cemetery that is home to 1,800 U.S. Marines who died in a key World War I battle because it was raining. His chief of staff at the time, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, went to the memorial without him.

Kelly also later confirmed that Trump referred to American service members who died in wars as “suckers” and “losers.”

During his very first dignified transfer in 2017 — for the death of a Navy SEAL during a raid in Yemen that Trump approved largely because former President Barack Obama had repeatedly nixed it because of its riskiness — Trump was berated by the father for his recklessness. Trump refused to attend any more dignified transfers for nearly two years. A subsequent service he attended in early 2020 became something of a field trip, with Trump bringing along participants from a reelection rally he had just left.