REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
Kamala Harris has a problem with veterans.
They overwhelmingly support her opponent — favoring Donald Trump by a lopsided 61% to 37%, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey.
For years, civilians have been sold a narrative that just isn’t true.
Democrats and liberals in the media invested heavily in trying to portray Trump as a leader at odds with America’s men and women in uniform.
But veterans themselves never bought the story — they’ve been one of the Republican’s most steadfast constituencies.
Trump won about six out of 10 veterans in each of the past two presidential elections, and he’s on track to match that performance this year.
Veterans like JD Vance better than Tim Walz, too.
Both vice-presidential contenders are veterans themselves, though Harris’ running mate has been criticized by men who served alongside him in the National Guard, who say Walz lied about his rank and exited the service just in time to avoid being sent to war in Iraq.
While Walz does well with civilians, Pew’s poll of veterans finds they prefer the ex-Marine on Trump’s ticket: 53% of vets view Vance favorably, while only 34% have a positive impression of Walz.
The Pew study suggests veteran discontent with Vice President Harris isn’t simply the result of a partisan tilt toward the GOP among vets.
Overall, less than a quarter of those polled — 23% — say Harris would make things better for veterans if she became president, compared to 55% who say Trump would do so.
Even among veterans who support Harris, 33% say she won’t make much difference either way if she wins the White House, and 5% say she’d actually make things worse.
Trump’s supporters, on the other hand, have little doubt — 83% of those backing him say he’d make things better for vets.
Whenever a high-profile general disparages Trump, as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley recently did in Bob Woodward’s book “War,” his opinion makes headlines.
The sentiments of ordinary soldiers and veterans get much less attention.
There’s a cultural gulf between these sides: Politically vocal generals and the national-security officials who sign their names to open letters supporting Harris for president are Washington insiders — creatures of “the Swamp.”
Their perspectives and interests aren’t those of the regular servicemember or vet.
When Milley, now retired, trashes Trump using standard Democratic campaign rhetoric —“now I realize he’s a total fascist,” he told Woodward — he’s speaking the language of his clique.
It’s also the language of his bank account.
Since leaving the Army, Milley has been making a mint as a consultant and a lecturer on the high-end circuit: “He is represented by the same high-powered speakers’ agency as Hillary Clinton,” notes Ken Klippenstein at The Intercept.
Klippenstein was recently banned from X — the social media site formerly known as Twitter — for sharing hacked information about the Republican ticket: He can’t be suspected of any sympathy for Trump when he exposes Milley’s “cashing in.”
The kind of institutions that pay top dollar for Hillary Clinton don’t expect to hear anything different from a speaker like Gen. Milley, and he knows it.
If veterans are a bedrock of Trump’s support, swamp things like Milley are a core constituency for Kamala Harris.
Trump is running against them as much as against her, and veterans are well aware of it — yet they’re with Trump, not the Swamp.
The top brass long misled America about the war in Afghanistan, which they insisted we were winning, and it was the troops who paid the price.
The fact that Harris has the backing of Washington’s foreign-policy establishment is for many voters a compelling reason to reject her.
Voters across the swing states trust Trump over Harris in matters of war and peace.
Fully 50% of those voters say Trump is better suited to handle the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with only 39% expressing more confidence in Harris, according to polling by The Wall Street Journal.
Trump holds an even bigger lead when it comes to which candidate battleground voters trust to handle the Israel-Hamas war: 48% say Trump, just 33% say Harris.
Every year the Biden-Harris administration has delivered a foreign-policy disaster — the lethally botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Hamas massacre of more than a thousand Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023 and the extension of the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East throughout 2024.
No wonder voters in the states most likely to decide the election want Trump’s foreign policy, not more of what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have given us these last four years.
Veterans, in particular, know the cost of failed leadership.
They’ve paid it before — and if Harris wins, their brothers and sisters in arms will pay it again.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.