Trump

Trump called for people to ‘respect the president’ - it went exactly as you'd expect

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

US president Donald Trump hasn’t exactly been respectful towards past presidents – what with him sharing a “disgustingly racist” video depicting Barack Obama as an ape, and telling people not to “feel sorry” for Joe Biden following his cancer diagnosis – and so when the 80-year-old said “you have to respect the president” in a speech on Friday, he was soon met with criticism online.

Addressing the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s policy conference in Washington D.C., the Republican said: “If you go back a year and a half, two years ago, you could not get anybody to join the army, the navy, the air force, the marines, the coastguard, the space force – you couldn’t get anyone to join.

“We couldn’t get policemen and women, we couldn’t get firemen and women – anything with a uniform because they were ashamed of our country because we had people that were not respect.

“You have to respect the president. If you don’t respect the president, you’re going to have a problem. They had no respect.”

And Trump asking for the president to be respected has gone about as well as you’d expect.

Author Don Winslow tweeted: “I have no respect for you or your family. At all”:

“Cry harder,” wrote California congressman Ted Lieu:

“This is pretty hard to square with everything he’s said about pretty much all the previous presidents – including when many of them were presidents,” said The Dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg:

One account wrote: “Citizens owe no personal loyalty to the President”:

And another responded: “Respect is earned and you’ve done nothing to earn our respect”:

Oops.

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