Biden torches Trump for PTSD comments

Vice President Joe Biden denounced Donald Trump for suggesting that veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) might not be “strong” enough and “can’t handle” what other troops can.

While campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Sarasota, Fla. Monday night, Biden expressed disbelief that the Republican presidential candidate’s controversial comments made earlier in the day at an event set up by the Retired American Warriors political action committee in Herndon, Va.

“Where in the hell is he from? No, no, no, no, no, this is deadly earnest,” Biden told the crowd of Clinton supporters. “My son spent a year in Iraq, came back a highly decorated veteran, bronze star and a lot else. I’ve been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan over 29 times.”

He recalled being asked to pin a silver metal onto a young captain who risked his life pulling someone out of a burning Humvee. The captain told Biden that he did not want the military decoration because the person he was trying to save died, he said.

“How many nights does that kid go to sleep seeing that image in his head? Dealing with it!” Biden yelled.

Trump’s comments about PTSD came during an extemporaneous response to a question about his commitment to faith-based suicide-prevention programs.

“When you talk about the mental health problems,” Trump said, “when people come back from war and combat, and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it. But a lot of people can’t handle it.”

Visibly angry, Biden picked up a card of his schedule from the podium and said that every day his staff receives updates from the U.S. Department of Defense on the number of troops who died in Afghanistan and Iraq: now 6,753.

“Every one of those warriors left behind an entire family, a community, for us! Every one of them,” Biden said.

Biden said that 52,419 have been physically wounded but that over 200,000 have come home to the U.S. with “unseen wounds” — which contribute to the estimated 20 daily suicides by veterans.

“I don’t think he was trying to be mean. He is just so thoroughly, completely uninformed,” he said.

According to Biden, Americans have many obligations — to the elderly and the poor, for example — but that they only have one sacred obligation: “to care for those we send to war and to care for them and their families when they come home.”

Though Trump’s sounded tone deaf and insensitive to many, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who advises Trump on military issues, says the GOP developer’s remarks were taken out of context. The veteran who asked Trump the question about PTSD released a statement further defending the GOP nominee.

“I think it’s sickening that anyone would twist Mr. Trump’s comments to me in order to pursue a political agenda. I took his comments to be thoughtful and understanding of the struggles many veterans have, and I believe he is committed to helping them,” Marine Staff Sgt. Chad Robichaux said in a statement released by the Trump campaign.

At the Orlando Clinton rally, Biden also mocked Trump’s public feud with former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado. In particular, the vice president criticized Trump’s early-morning Twitter tirade against the former beauty queen at the end of last week.

“You don’t have to be a psychologist or psychiatrist,” he said, “but what kind of leader awakens at three o’clock in the morning and tweets Hillary helped ‘disgusting Alicia M. become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in a debate?’ Or 3:30 in the morning. This guy wants to be president of the United States of America.”

Here are a few of the tweets in question: