We had a letter from a reader, asking what to say to friends who still believe the “suckers and losers” hoax. So to help that reader and anyone else who missed the previous explanations, here’s the story:

It all started when the liberal Atlantic magazine claimed that Trump had canceled a visit to a cemetery in France to honor fallen US veterans of World Wars I and II, saying that the men who died there were “suckers and losers.” Their basis for this was allegedly four unnamed sources claiming to have heard this. That alone should get your alarm bells ringing.

Aside from the fact that Trump has always shown great respect for the military so it’s completely out of character, both the official flight logs and the weather report for that day prove that the trip was canceled because the weather was too dangerous for his helicopter to take off. In addition, there were many other people along on that trip who testified that Trump expressed disappointment in not being able to attend the event. They also denied that he ever said anything about our military heroes being “suckers and losers.” These witnesses who actually gave their names ranged from John Bolton, who is hardly a Trump fan, to his then-press secretary, my own daughter Sarah, whom I tend to believe over the Atlantic's "unnamed sources."

Defenders of the story cite several sources that also were not present at this alleged event. They include former White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, who accused Trump of disparaging soldiers in private, a claim Trump’s spokesperson strongly denied…A Fox News reporter who claimed that (again) an unnamed source told her Trump once said the Vietnam War was stupid and anyone who went was a sucker…and an event in which Trump allegedly called Sen. John McCain a “loser” (McCain was a vet and former POW, but there’s no verification Trump said that, or if he did, that he was referring to his military history and not his losing presidential campaign.) Sorry to go so deep into the weeds, but I wanted to show you the lengths to which the media will go to try to connect distant dots to support an anonymous, debunked allegation against Trump.

Because the Atlantic stands by the story, liberal “fact-checkers” rated it as “unsubstantiated” rather than “a scurrilous lie.”

A spokesman for the Atlantic claimed they corroborated the story (Names, please? No?...) and “former President Trump’s repeated denials of his well-documented remarks.”

I guess I must have a different definition of “well-documented” than the Atlantic, since I don’t consider it documentation to lodge a slanderous accusation based on alleged anonymous sources when it’s denied not only by the target but by everyone else in the room when it allegedly happened. If this is typical of their standards for corroboration, then I suggest you not believe anything you read in the Atlantic, and that includes the date on the cover.

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