‘He Looks Like a Toy Soldier’: Brutal Trump Photo Explodes Online as He Tries to Look Tough on Iran Amid Talk His Family May Never See the Front Lines
As much as President Donald Trump wants the world to see him as a great military leader, one of his recent efforts at reaching that […] ‘He Looks Like a Toy Soldier’: Brutal Trump Photo Explodes Online as He Tries to Look Tough on Iran Amid Talk His Family May Never See the Front Lines
Black News 
As much as President Donald Trump wants the world to see him as a great military leader, one of his recent efforts at reaching that goal fell flat with many people online.
Trump, 79, led the United States into a military operation against Iran beginning on Feb. 28, and the current U.S. commander in chief has struggled to gain support from the American people for the latest war in the Middle East.
In what appears to be an attempt to symbolically put himself in the shoes of the men and women fighting overseas, Trump shared a new photo that has many distracted by his military stance.
Trump attended the private boarding school in Cornwall, starting in the eighth grade at age 13. His father and mother, Fred Trump and Mary Anne Trump, sent him to the educational institution from 1959 to 1964, where the future politician reportedly “ruled dormitory life with an iron fist.”
On March 12, the president posted an image of himself as a teenager dressed in the New York Military Academy uniform on his Truth Social platform, standing next to his smiling, well-dressed parents.
“At Military Academy with my parents, Fred and Mary!” Trump captioned the image. The official White House Facebook account also reposted the portrait roughly six minutes after it appeared online.
The black-and-white snapshot of Donald, Fred, and Mary was then uploaded to X, which opened the door for Trump’s vocal detractors to drag the former “The Apprentice” reality show host.
“The irony of a five-time draft dodger posting military academy pictures while Americans are dying in a war he started,” a self-styled progressive declared about Trump, who many claimed “He looks like a toy soldier.”
Trump did not serve in the U.S. armed forces as a young man when the country was engulfed in the Vietnam War, a protracted conflict that resulted in over 58,000 American troops losing their lives from 1964 to 1973.
At the time, he avoided the military draft four times to complete his college education at Fordham University (1964-1966) and the University of Pennsylvania (1966-1968). Upon graduating from Penn’s Wharton School, the economics major was able to dodge the draft again, thanks to a bone spur diagnosis.
Additional people on X weighed in on Trump’s flashback photo from his high school era. One critic wrote, “This was before he was stricken with a crippling case of bone spurs, which fortunately don’t affect golfing.”
“High school at a military school. Shipped off there by Dad because he was a problem child at home,” expressed an X poster, referring to longstanding gossip about Trump’s supposed troublemaking childhood.
Trump critics suggested the twice-impeached president’s experience as a cadet did not produce the desired results, including one posting, “He was sent to the military academy because they hoped it would improve his behavior. Obviously, it did not work.”
Trump’s diehard MAGA supporters caught heat as well. For instance, someone joked, “Half his followers will see this tweet and think that he went to West Point rather than a glorified reform school for troubled rich kids.”
While Trump showcased his mom and dad as loving parents, insiders connected to the family have maintained that he did not have a strong relationship with his wealthy real estate developer dad.
“I strongly suspect that he had a relationship with his father that accounts for a lot of what he became,” Tony Schwartz, who co-authored “The Art of the Deal” with Trump, stated in a 2020 Frontline documentary.
The New York City-based veteran journalist added, “And his father was a very brutal guy. He was a tough, hard-driving guy who had very, very little emotional intelligence, to use today’s terms.”
Trump may have needed to reconnect with Schwartz, 73, to get a proper refresher on his own family history. On March 3, the POTUS held an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that left viewers confused.
“He knows all about my father. My father was born there. So, you know, very places that you sort of automatically, very, very feel warmly about,” Trump said while motioning in the direction of his German guest.
Those remarks raised eyebrows because it appeared Trump either forgot or just blatantly lied about his dad supposedly immigrating to America from Germany, when Fred Trump was born in New York City like his son.
