Thank you President Bidne for visiting the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France where World War One veterans are interred

Echo news reported by Chris Megerian and Zeke Miller

BELLEAU, France (AP) — President Joe Biden closed out his trip to France by paying his respects at an American military cemetery that Donald Trump notably skipped* visiting when he was president, hoping his final stop Sunday will draw the stakes of the November election in stark relief.

Before returning to the United States, Biden honored America’s war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery about an hour outside Paris. He placed a wreath at the cemetery chapel before an expanse of white headstones marking the final resting place of more than 2,200 U.S. soldiers who fought in World War I.

It was a solemn end to five days in which Trump was an unspoken yet unavoidable presence. On the surface, the trip marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and celebrated the alliance between the United States and France. But during an election year when Trump has called into question fundamental understandings about America’s global role, Biden has embraced his Republican predecessor — and would-be successor — as a latent foil.

With headstones lying in a sweeping curve, the 42.5-acre Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, sits at the foot of Belleau Wood. The cemetery contains the graves of 2,289 war dead, most of whom fought in the vicinity and in the Marne Valley in the summer of 1918. The memorial chapel sits on a hillside, decorated with sculptured and stained-glass details of wartime personnel, equipment and insignia. Inscribed on its interior wall are 1,060 names of the missing. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified. In 1940, during World War II the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery chapel was damaged due to heavy fighting in the vicinity. All damage was repaired except for one shell hole in the chapel, left as a reminder of what took place.

Belleau Wood adjoins the cemetery and contains many vestiges of World War I. A monument at the flagpole commemorates the valor of the U.S. Marines who captured much of this ground in 1918.

Presiddnt Biden capped off a five-day trip to France paying his respects with a wreath-laying at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial before returning to Washington. 

President Biden spent much of the trip to France honoring American veterans – but the subtext of Sunday’s expedition is also aimed at Trump, who scrapped his 2018, journey to the World War I memorial and later faced criticism for denigrating US veterans.

*In 2018, Trump, at the time, was in Paris to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I with other world leaders, blamed weather and safety issues for eschewing the cemetery visit. The president’s Marine One helicopter cannot fly in low cloud cover, a decision that is made by military and security officials. But there did not appear to be a backup plan, and Trump did not make any statements of regret over not being able to visit the cemetery.

CNN later reported that Trump referred to the fallen US service members at Aisne-Marne in crude and derogatory terms. A former senior Trump administration official, who declined to be named, confirmed reporting from The Atlantic magazine, which cited sources who said Trump rejected the idea of a cemetery visit and proceeded to refer to the fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.”

Message to Donald Trump was sobering- "You're Fired!"

Associated Press report by Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump erupted at his top political advisers last week when they presented him with worrisome polling data that showed his support eroding in a series of battleground states as his response to the coronavirus comes under criticism.

As the virus takes its deadly toll and much of the nation’s economy remains shuttered, new surveys by the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign pointed to a harrowing picture for the president as he faces reelection.

While Trump saw some of the best approval ratings of his presidency during the early weeks of the crisis, aides highlighted the growing political cost of the crisis and the unforced errors by Trump in his freewheeling press briefings.

Trump reacted with defiance, incredulous that he could be losing to someone he viewed as a weak candidate.

“I am not f—-ing losing to Joe Biden,” he repeated in a series of heated conference calls with his top campaign officials, according to five people with knowledge of the conversations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.

The message to the president was sobering: Trump was trailing the former Democratic vice president in many key battleground states, he was told, and would have lost the Electoral College if the election had been held earlier this month.

On the line from the White House, Trump snapped at the state of his polling during a series of calls with campaign manager Brad Parscale, who called in from Florida; RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, on the line from her home in Michigan; senior adviser Jared Kushner; and other aides.

Echoing a number of White House aides and outside advisers, the political team urged Trump to curtail his daily coronavirus briefings, arguing that the combative sessions were costing him in the polls, particularly among seniors. Trump initially pushed back, pointing to high television ratings. But, at least temporarily, he agreed to scale back the briefings after drawing sharp criticism for raising the idea that Americans might get virus protection by injecting disinfectants.

Trump aides encouraged the president to stay out of medical issues and direct his focus toward more familiar and politically important ground: the economy.

Even as Trump preaches (fake!) optimism, the president has expressed frustration and even powerlessness as the dire economic statistics pile up. It’s been a whiplash-inducing moment for the president, who just two months ago planned to run for reelection on the strength of an economy that was experiencing unprecedented employment levels. Now, as the records mount in the opposite direction, Trump is feeling the pressure.

“We built the greatest economy in the world,” Trump has said publicly. “I’ll do it a second time.”

Trump’s political team warned that the president’s path to reelection depends on how quickly he can bring about a recovery.

“I think you’ll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again,” Kushner told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning. But other aides, business leaders and economists predict a far longer road toward recovery.

Representatives for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign did not comment on the polling or last week’s phone calls. In a tweet just after midnight Wednesday, Trump denied that he had recently shouted at his campaign manager and said that “he is doing a great job.” 

According to people familiar with the incident, Trump vented much of his frustration at Parscale, who served as the bearer of bad news.

Trump has long distrusted negative poll numbers — telling aides for years that his gut was right about the 2016 race, when he insisted that he was ahead in the Midwest and Florida. At the same time, Parscale and other Trump aides are talking up the sophistication of their data and voter outreach capabilities this time.

The president and some aides have had simmering frustrations with Parscale for a while, believing the campaign manager — a close Kushner ally — has enriched himself from his association with Trump and sought personal publicity. Trump had previously been angered when Parscale was the subject of magazine profiles. This latest episode flared before the campaign manager was featured in a New York Times Magazine profile this week.

Aides have grown particularly worried about Michigan — which some advisers have all but written off -- as well as Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona.

Trump announced Wednesday that he will visit Arizona next week — his first trip outside Washington in a month — as he looks to declare that much of the nation is ready to begin reopening after the virus.

The president has mocked Biden, his presumptive general election rival, for being “stuck in his basement” in his Delaware home during the pandemic.

Trump said Wednesday that he hopes to soon visit Ohio, a battleground state that Trump carried handily in 2016 but that aides see as growing slightly competitive in recent weeks.

Aides acknowledged that the president’s signature rallies would not be returning anytime soon. Some have privately offered doubts that he would be able to hold any in his familiar format of jam-packed arenas before Election Day, Nov. 3.

Jonathan Lemire reported from New York.