A Response To Donald Trump From A Former Army Sergeant

First, I would like to say that I am a former Army Sergeant with 5 years of service, including multiple tours of combat operations in Iraq. I myself have been diagnosed with mild PTSD, as well as a few other bodily ailments brought on from my service.

To Donald Trump, I would like to respond to the comments that he made the other day about me and my fellow veterans suffering from PTSD and those of us that are “strong” and those that “can’t handle it”, referring to the scars that only we can see.  I’m not mad, upset or criticizing him like the mainstream Liberal media is. I truly do not believe that he meant any offense, or intentionally demeaned those veterans that have battled with PTSD and have succumbed to their personal demons.  I have lost battle buddies to PTSD and have personally tried to drown my own demons at the bottom of a bottle.  Unfortunately, Trump’s comments are the latest in a string of verbal gaffes and poor choice of words.  I think that he had several trains of thought while answering the question, like he normally does, and mixed up the phrasing that he might have wanted to use otherwise.

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Regretfully, I do have to agree with Trump. Many of my fellow veterans are suffering every day with symptoms of PTSD, and choose to end their lives because they could no longer “handle” their afflictions.  Sadly, they choose to take their own lives because they were not receiving the adequate care that this government should be providing them. This does not make them weaker than the rest us, we are all different, suffering in different ways.  These men and women chose the only way they thought could truly end their suffering.

Now, I have never exactly been Trump’s biggest supporter, but I’m not going to attack him for the errant comments that he made this week about the veterans that “can’t handle” the issues that come with PTSD. I only want to criticize the poor choice of words Trump used and I agree with many of my fellow service men and women, in that Trump had no intentions of offending veterans, he just said the wrong thing in the wrong context.  But, as a future leader of this country and a potential commander in chief of our armed services, Donald Trump needs to step up his game, stay on one train of thought, and choose the words that he speaks a little more wisely.  But that isn’t exactly Trump’s style.  So I don’t fault him for that. But if he wants to maintain the support of our veterans and active duty military, Trump needs to get a little better about watching what he says every once in awhile.

As smart as he was using the tax code to his advantage, he needs to be a little smarter with his phrasing and timing.  He has to be aware of the Clinton Media Machine and the microscope that they have him under, looking for any little thing that can be taken out of context and misconstrued to Clinton’s advantage.  They are determined to lie, cheat and steal this election by any means necessary.  With this incident, and saying John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he got captured, Trump doesn’t have many more chances to keep our support and frankly, he doesn’t have enough time to deal with the potential fallout of his gaffes with the election a month away.

So, in the words of my father, when I did something stupid as a kid…I’m not mad, I'm just disappointed. Disappointed that he would say the things that he did, the way that he did, this close to election day when he needs to be on top of his game, and be, dare I say, presidential.  There is too much at stake to let a little gaffe finally take down the political juggernaut that has been Donald Trump.