title:  ‘Veteran Loving’ Trump Fires Veterans Because Their Service Inconveniences Him
text: Finally, the media is giving Donald Trump the critical eye they should. The stories about the Trump University lawsuits and his refusal to release his tax returns are proving to be troublesome to the GOP frontrunner s campaign, but one of the most damaging might be the missing money that was supposedly pegged for veterans.Things are about to get a whole lot worse on the veteran front. The Huffington Post reported that Trump actually discriminates against veterans because they spend too much time serving their country.In at least three cases, Trump s companies have either fired, or refused to hire, military reservists because of the time commitments demanded of them by their service in the armed forces. The veterans involved have sued Trump for violating the laws meant to protect them from precisely these types of penalties. And in all three cases, Trump and his companies have settled the suits.The Huffington Post already reported on the first two of these cases   one involving an Air Force senior master sergeant fired from the Trump Institute in 2007, and one an Army staff sergeant fired from her job at Trump University that same year.These two cases, however, have a predecessor. On May 27, 1988, United States Air Force Col. Charles Beattie submitted orders to his bosses at Eastern Airlines, where he worked as a pilot.For Trump, it seems, it s cheaper to pay fines for this clear violation of the law than to follow the law. Trump is an egomaniac. The fact that he doesn t like to employ people whose priority is our country should be all the proof we need that Trump has no desire to serve our country. He never has, beginning with the fact that Trump avoided the draft.It s doubtful that Trump actively dislikes veterans, but it s clear he doesn t care about them. He would happily and haphazardly send them into war zones, perhaps because a world leader hurt his feelings.The fact that he doesn t like vets working for him is only the tip of the iceberg. For a man who has planned on running for president for at least a few years, he s done little to beef up his image as a patriot. The Republican party is supposedly the party of veterans (of course, we wouldn t know it by how they vote, but they think they love the veterans), but Trump gave zero of his personal money to veterans groups, and his foundation donated a paltry $57,000. As Forbes Magazine notes, Trump once demanded that CNN give veterans $5 million for Trump to appear at a debate. They didn t, but that would be $494,000,000 than his foundation has given.As I said, the media is finally beginning to look critically at Trump, but it s time they start calling these things what they are: scandals. They might even qualify for a  gate. Featured image via Christopher Furlong with Getty Images.