Retired Army general says Trump skipped veterans event in France to 'eat cheeseburgers' and 'watch TV'

President Trump has been roundly criticized for skipping a veterans event in France over the weekend, and on Tuesday, a retired Army officer offered a particularly scathing assessment of the affair.

Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general who served as former President Bill Clinton's Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, told MSNBC's Brian Williams Tuesday that Trump skipping the event in France was "insulting." The president did so simply because he wanted to "stay out of the rain, eat cheeseburgers, watch TV, and tweet angry denunciations of his many enemies," said McCaffrey, per Mediaite.

Trump was in France with other world leaders to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War I, and he was scheduled to visit a cemetery where American soldiers are buried but canceled at the last minute. The White House at the time cited the rainy weather, saying it would not be safe to travel by helicopter, reports The New York Times. Trump days later threw the Secret Service under the bus, saying he wanted to travel to the event by car but they wouldn't let him.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But McCaffrey, an outspoken critic of Trump who has previously called him a "serious threat to U.S. national security," doesn't buy that explanation, and thinks Trump stayed home out of pure laziness. Watch McCaffrey's comments below. Brendan Morrow