
Trump peddled his phony claims about a War on Christmas while addressing American troops overseas.

With a barren display case of accomplishments this year, Donald Trump has turned to his supposed victory in the imaginary war on Christmas and touts it as perhaps his greatest cultural accomplishment from the Oval Office.

Perhaps it makes sense that a guy who skipped the Vietnam War with a sore foot would consider his leadership in the so-called War on Christmas to be among his most important victories to date.

Trump even bragged about the yuletide victory while addressing U.S. troops stationed around the world.


"I just want to wish everybody a very, very Merry Christmas. We say Merry Christmas, again, very, very proudly," Trump announced during a teleconference from his Mar-a-Lago manner in Florida on Christmas Eve. "We're going to have a great year, an incredible year."

A group of American veterans quickly called Trump out and condemned him for trying to politicize a universal day of thanks giving.

Politicizing a religious holiday for personal gain. Are you really trying to divide our military on Christmas? https://t.co/2otIIbnyYL — VoteVets (@votevets) December 25, 2017

The idea that Trump would use a chance to speak with American troops at Christmastime to peddle a phony claim about the nation's predominant religion being under attack in the United States indicates just how little respect he has for the military.

The whole Fox News-sponsored War on Christmas is yet another cultural tug-of-war that Trump and conservative ideologues are clearly losing. From Newsweek:

In 2012, the number of Americans who demanded shopkeepers and store staff greet them with “Merry Christmas” and those who did not care either way, were neck and neck, 43 percent to 45 percent, respectively. According to the latest survey, 52 percent no longer cared about the season’s greetings in shops, while only 32 percent clung to the “Merry Christmas” proclamation.

Meanwhile, a recent Pew Poll indicates that Christmas itself is seen increasingly as more of a cultural holiday in the United States, and less of a religious one. In fact, just half of Americans planned on attending church on Christmas this year.

Yet in a creepy, Orwellian turn last week, a pro-Trump campaign group released a video of Americans thanking Trump, and one of them was a little girl thanking Trump for "letting us say Merry Christmas again."

No president has ever tried to stop Americans from saying "Merry Christmas." But only Trump has tried to score cheap political points off the feel-good greeting.