Trump backs down on 'Stars and Stripes' military newspaper shutdown

A military recruiting station in Times Square in Manhattan.

Spencer Platt / GETTY

Arguably, the election campaign and a president on the defensive after the publication of a mockery of fallen troops in the war have saved the military-style newspaper founded in 1861

from closure

.

Late on Friday and contradicting his Secretary of Defense without prior notice, Donald Trump announced his determination to reverse the decision made by the Pentagon to reduce costs and stop publishing the paper publication on the last day of this month of September and close the

information

of a medium that since it was founded by Union soldiers during the North American Civil War has fulfilled the task of informing the troops about the troops.

After several hours of important media outlets echoing Defense plans to shut down the newspaper on Friday night, Trump decided to change the narrative and announce on Twitter: “The United States will not cut funds for the newspaper @starsandstripes under my supervision".

Despite the fact that Trump had previously said that the publication was "dying", his need to silence the information - denied by the White House - that the soldiers who fell on the battlefront were "losers" because they allowed themselves to be killed, it has led him to declare that

"will continue to be a wonderful source of information for our great Army."

The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch.

It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2020

The newspaper has been a headache for presidents and defense secretaries during the "eternal wars" that began after the terrorist attacks of September 11, by giving a voice to the uniformed who questioned the decisions made by their commanders and political leaders .

Despite having the support of veterans and congressional leaders to keep the newspaper on its feet, the Defense Department notified last February that it planned to cut its funding.

According to

, on August 4 its directors received a memorandum requesting the presentation of a plan before next September 15 for the closure of that medium, which would stop publishing "in all its formats" on September 30. this month.

A bipartisan group of 11 Democratic senators and four Republicans had asked the Department of Defense, led by Mark Esper, to continue funding a publication that has more than 1.3 million readers (between paper and digital).

In a letter sent to Esper, those senators argued that the Pentagon could safely take the 15.5 million that the newspaper needs out of the total of 700,000 million that that institution has allocated by Congress.

With less than 60 days until the presidential elections on November 3, Trump's alleged mockery of soldiers killed in wars has fully immersed himself in the campaign and has put the military's vote for the Republican at risk.

A

poll

this week revealed a continued decline in active-duty support for Trump.

The figures say that about 50% have an unfavorable view of the president compared to 38% who have it favorable.

At the beginning of his presidency, those numbers were just the other way around.

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