{"id":668274,"date":"2026-03-20T03:41:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/668274\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T03:41:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:41:26","slug":"trump-keeps-press-away-from-dignified-transfer-but-posts-pics-on-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/668274\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Keeps Press Away From Dignified Transfer But Posts Pics On Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. \u2013 Hours after barring the news media from witnessing the return of six service members killed in Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

One of the photos posted<\/a> to X shows Trump at the \u201cdignified transfer,\u201d 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<\/a> account, a transfer case is visible as airmen load it into a van.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told HuffPost Thursday, \u201cThe families did not agree to press. They agreed to official photography.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

At the previous dignified transfer he attended on March 8, Trump wore a white campaign baseball cap during the service \u2014 a souvenir that his family business sells<\/a> on its website for $55 plus $9.99 for shipping.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely disgusting,\u201d said Fred Wellman, a former Army helicopter pilot and now a Democratic candidate for Congress in Missouri. \u201cI don\u2019t know of any veterans who have been OK with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cprivate national security briefings, unfiltered updates on the threats facing America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who click on the links, however, are instead taken to a donation<\/a> page for Never Surrender Inc., Trump\u2019s \u201cleadership\u201d political action committee \u2014 a virtually unregulated political group, effectively a slush fund<\/a> Trump can use however he wants. There is no mention of national security briefings on the donation page.<\/p>\n

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: \u201cI do. I mean, I didn\u2019t see it. Somebody puts it out. We have a lot of people working for us, but there\u2019s nobody that\u2019s 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\u2019s nobody that has ever been higher as a president than me with the military.\u201d<\/p>\n

That solicitation drew the ire of Democratic senators in a hearing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019s a disgrace,\u201d said Georgia\u2019s Jon Ossoff.<\/p>\n

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly grilled CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard: \u201cDo you think the public, supporters of the president, should be able to pay and receive his private national security briefings?\u201d<\/p>\n

Both said they were unaware of the fundraising email.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have worn it,\u201d Kelly, a former astronaut, Navy pilot and combat veteran, said of Trump\u2019s ball cap Thursday. \u201cWhat\u2019s worse is that he used that picture of a solemn moment to raise money for his campaign. But I don\u2019t expect a lot from a president who continuously disrespects service members and doesn\u2019t understand the sacrifices they make.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, Trump does not appear to have used images from Wednesday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Trump personally avoided military service in Vietnam by claiming \u201cbone spurs\u201d 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 \u201cpersonal Vietnam\u201d and thought<\/a> of himself as \u201ca great and very brave soldier.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. His chief of staff at the time, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, went to the memorial without him.<\/p>\n

Kelly also later confirmed that Trump referred to American service members who died in wars as \u201csuckers\u201d and \u201closers.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his very first dignified transfer in 2017 \u2014 for the death of a Navy SEAL during a raid in Yemen that Trump approved largely because former President Barack Obama<\/a> had repeatedly nixed it because of its riskiness \u2014 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. \u2013 Hours after barring the news media from witnessing the return of six…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":668275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[69,1802,50,345,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-668274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-military","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-social-media","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116259434169300389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}