President Joe Biden called out presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump without naming him on Sunday.
Biden, spending his last day in France to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, stopped at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery roughly 50 miles outside of Paris.
The cemetery contains the graves of 2,289 American war dead, mostly from a significant World War I battle. But Biden also alluded to a 2018 trip Trump took to the area in which he neglected to visit the cemetery due to bad weather.
“More Marines were lost here than in any battle until World War II,” Biden said. “And the idea that I’d come to Normandy and not make the short trip here to pay tribute … think about it. America showed up.”
Trump was scheduled to visit the same cemetery in 2018, but the trip was canceled due to bad weather. Presidents often fly by helicopter for short trips but will go by motorcade, which is slower, in the event of heavy rain. Trump’s team said the trip was canceled because the cemetery was too far to travel by motorcade in the allotted time frame.
A report later emerged, citing anonymous sources, that Trump canceled the visit in part because he thoughts the Marines who died in the battle were “suckers” and the cemetery was “filled with losers.”
While Biden did not mention those words on Sunday, he has referenced them at other times.
Trump and his allies have fiercely denied he ever said the comments, and the Republican National Committee sent out an email blast shortly after Biden’s remarks.
“It wasn’t true in 2020 and it’s still not true now — but no disgusting lies are beneath Biden,” RNC spokesman Jake Schneider said.
The blast cited a CBS report saying emails proved that a bad weather call led to the 2018 cancellation. The RNC also pointed to 15 current or former Trump associates who have denied the report.
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Biden also suggested that isolationism is not the right path forward for the United States, something he has said repeatedly that can be read as a rebuttal to Trump.
“And the idea that we were able to avoid being engaged in major battles in Europe — it’s just not realistic,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important that we continue to have the allies that we have, continue to beef up those alliances … continue to keep NATO strong. Continue to do what we’ve been able to since the end of World War Two.”
