Trump Discusses Grieving Families of Soldiers, Says 'Bring Our Troops Back Home'

At a rally on Thursday, President Trump said that after being caught up in Afghanistan and Syria for years on end, it was time to “bring our troops back home.”

The President explained to his supporters at a rally just why he wanted to bring our troops back home. Echoing a press conference he had held earlier this week, President Trump said that the hardest thing he had to as President was “sign letters” to the families of soldiers who had been killed in action.

“It just breaks your heart,” he told the crowd.

President Trump recalled his visits to Dover Airforce Base, where he meets the parents and families of those soldiers whose remains are making their final journey back to US soil.

“These things are just impossible, I don’t know how parents can do it even,” he said. The families would tell him “they’ll be fine,” but that nothing could be further from the truth:

I’ll tell the colonel, I said “colonel, I think they’re doing great.” “No sir, they’re not gonna do great, you’ll see.” And I didn’t know what he was talking about, this is the first time. And then we went outside to the runway, and this incredible machine is flying, and it lands and it comes over and it pulls up.

That door opens up, and the colonel told me, he said, “sir, when that door opens up, those same people that you think are okay, they’ll do things like you’ll never see, they’ll do sounds like you’ve never heard.”

I saw that door open up, with a coffin, with a flag over it, and I saw these beautiful soldiers, 5 or 6 on each side, lifting the coffin, and walking down the runway, the plank they call it, off this cargo plane, and I see parents make sounds, scream and cry, like you’ve never seen before.

A mother who was fine 20 minutes ago you think, breaking the military line and jumping off, and then jumping onto a coffin of her son and her daughter. Jumping on, on top of the flowers on top of the American flag, I’ve seen this.

The President said that after all these deaths of young Americans, it was time to bring our troops back home:

We were supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, we’ve now been there for 10 years. We were supposed to be in Afghanistan for a short period of time, we’re now going to have been there for close to 19 years. It’s time to bring them home, it’s time to bring them home. Bring our troops back home!

You can watch a video of the speech.