President Donald Trump, who claims to have ended seven wars, declared himself a “war hero” and lauded Benjamin Netanyahu as a “good man” and fellow “war hero” during a radio interview on Tuesday evening.
Speaking to conservative radio host Mark Levin, the president said he was working with the Israeli prime minister to free Hamas-held hostages, adding that Netanyahu is “a good man, he’s in there fighting.”
Despite the Israeli prime minister’s detractors wanting him jailed as a war criminal following a November 2024 arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict issued by the International Criminal Court, Trump insisted: “He’s a war hero.”
Trump then extended the accolade to himself, saying: “He’s a war hero, cause we worked together. He’s a war hero. I guess I am too.”
He continued: “Nobody cares. I am too. I sent those planes,” a reference to his order for June airstrikes against three critical enrichment facilities in Iran.
Throughout the interview, Trump complained he had not received sufficient credit for ordering those air strikes or other recent actions he has taken aimed at easing global conflict.
For his part, Netanyahu has previously called Trump “the greatest friend Israel has ever had,” and in July presented him with a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Shortly after the interview aired, CNN host Erin Burnett played the clip to former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Trump nemesis who served on the January 6 House Select Committee.
Kinzinger, a former Air National Guard officer who flew missions over Iraq and Afghanistan, commented: “I mean, look, this is just nuts. This is nuts. And they’re going to find, his people are going to find, a way to justify this.”
He continued: “Listen, when they were putting out something honoring the Army’s 250th anniversary, they put out a picture of Donald Trump in his military academy uniform, which has nothing to do with the military except they drill you. This is nuts. He’s not a war hero.”
Kinzinger added, referencing the president’s role in nascent peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine: “You can like what he’s done. That’s fine. I hope he gets a resolution in Ukraine. But to put himself on the same level of people that have actually gone out and served this country, not claimed bone spurs, is an offense to anybody who served.”
The former congressman also noted that it would be inappropriate for anyone who had actually served to call themself a war hero.
Burnett, agreeing that the administration will likely find a way to justify the comment, also noted: “You’re also right about something really important, which is the humility that defines a war hero, right? The humility of the fact that someone who’s a war hero would never call themselves that.”
Trump’s most infamous comments about war heroes in the past included denying that the late Senator John McCain was a war hero because he had been captured and held as a prisoner of war.
The president made those remarks while campaigning for the Republican nomination in 2015, caused a storm of protest at the time. During an interview in Iowa, the presenter said McCain was a “war hero,” to which Trump replied: “He’s not a hero… He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you that.”
McCain, a former Navy pilot, spent five and a half years in a notorious Vietnamese prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was repeatedly tortured and spent years in solitary confinement.
Trump avoided serving in Vietnam with four college deferrals and one for having “bone spurs,” a foot problem.
In 2018, Trump reportedly snubbed a planned commemoration for the 100th anniversary of WWI at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau, fearing his hair would become disheveled in the rain, The Atlantic reported in 2020.
“Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” Trump reportedly told staffers, according to the magazine. The then-president also called the more than 1,800 Marines buried there “suckers” elsewhere during his 2018 trip in France, perThe Atlantic.
John Kelly, a former Marine Corps general and the White House chief of staff at the time, attended in Trump’s place.
Kelly, whose son was killed in action serving in Afghanistan in 2010, later told CNN that Trump had indeed made the derogatory remarks, describing him in a statement as someone who “rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
Trump has repeatedly denied ever making the statement, calling the alleged comments “disinformation” reported by the “fake news.”
During his second administration’s radical attempts to downsize the federal government, the Department of Veterans Affairs was forced into backing down from its plans to cut 83,000 jobs after a public outcry.
The department has moved to reassure veterans that it has “multiple safeguards in place to ensure these staff reductions do not impact veteran care or benefits.”
While VA Secretary Doug Collins had insisted the much bigger reduction in the workforce was tough but necessary, veterans’ advocacy groups warned that it would have devastating long-term consequences for former members of the armed forces, who deserved better after serving their country.
“Gutting VA will result in delayed appointments and substandard care, leading directly to more veteran deaths,” said Kayla Williams, an Iraq War veteran and senior policy adviser at VoteVets.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the ranking member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, also slammed the plan as “a gut punch” and “breathtaking in its potential significance and its malevolence and cruelty.”
The Gaza War, for which Netanyahu’s arrest warrant was issued, was triggered by an attack inside Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, during which around 1,200 Israelis were killed, while another 251 people were taken hostage.
The ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It also issued a warrant for Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, who Israel said it had killed in an airstrike, accusing him of war crimes over the attack on Israel.
While the decision makes Netanyahu an internationally wanted suspect, the extent of the warrant’s practical implications is unclear, given that Israel and its major ally, the U.S., are not members of the court.
