Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport
Avoca, Pennsylvania

12:05 P.M. EDT

Q    Mr. President, will you talk about the war memorial you were just at very briefly?  What did you see?  What did you hear?

THE PRESIDENT:  I wanted to see where my uncle, Ambrose J. Finnegan, was memorialized.  And there was a World War Two memorial built for those who lost their lives in World War Two. 

And when D-Day occurred, the next day, on Monday, all four of my mother’s brothers went down and volunteered to join the military.  And four of them — three of them made it.  One was 4-F — couldn’t go.

And Ambrose Finnegan — we called him “Uncle Bosie” — he — he was shot down.  He was Army Air Corps before there was an Air Force.  He flew single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea.  He had volunteered because someone couldn’t make it.  He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time. 

They never recovered his body.  But the government went back, when I went down there, and they checked and found some parts of the plane and the like.

And what I was thinking about when I was standing there was when Trump refused to go up to the memorial for veterans in Paris, and he said they were a bunch of “suckers” and “losers.”

To me, that is such a disqualifying assertion made by a president — “suckers” and “losers.”  The guys who saved civilization in the 1940s — “suckers” and “losers.” 

And I just wanted to go and — we have a tradition in our family that my grandfather started.  When you visit a gravesite of a family member — it’s going to sound strange to you, but — you say three Hail Marys.  And that’s what I was doing at the site.

My — my gran- — my uncle, Ambrose Finnegan — Uncle — Uncle Bosie was a hell of a guy from what I — I never met him, obviously.

And — but I just wanted to see where he was memorialized.

Q    And, Mr. President, what do you think about these separate bills for Ukraine and Israel aid?  Are you confident that it’s going to get through?

THE PRESIDENT:  I’m getting briefed on it when I get on the plane.  That’s why I was talking to my staff.  I’ll tell you then.

Thank you.

     12:08 P.M. EDT