U.S. President Donald Trump read from a prayer delivered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he joined other world leaders and veterans Wednesday in marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

Roosevelt went on national radio on June 6, 1944, to address the U.S. for the first time about the Normandy invasion. Trump traveled to the southern coast of England Wednesday to pay respects to American service members and allies who helped rescue Europe from Nazi Germany. He sat in a VIP area with other world leaders and in between Queen Elizabeth II and first lady Melania Trump during the program, which focused on a telling of events leading up to D-Day. Some 300 World War II veterans also attended the seaside ceremony.

Trump started off the solemn day of commemoration with an early morning Twitter attack on American actress Bette Midler. Trump tweeted, “Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make “your great president” look really bad. She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!”

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Conservative commentator Bill Kristol satirically put the moment in historical context, “June 5, 1944, in Great Britain: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower drafts this statement in case the invasion fails (Ike seems to have written the date as July 5 rather than June 5). June 5, 2019, in Great Britain: U.S. President Donald J. Trump tweets an attack on Bette Midler.”

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Author Brian Klaas commented, “Trump has now had harsher criticism for Bette Midler, Meryl Streep, and Nordstrom than he has for Kim Jong-Un and Vladimir Putin.”

Other Twitter users simply displayed their frustration with the president, writing, “D Day commemoration today and THIS is what you tweet about?! Good grief” and “You are an embarrassment to our country on the world stage. You should be reading D Day stories not Bette Midler tweets.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article