President Donald Trump visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Tuesday for a check-up, but did not meet with 14 troops wounded in the ongoing Iran war who were recovering at the facility, according to a CBS News report.
The 79-year-old Republican president met with other service members during his visit, a longstanding presidential tradition, but a military official and the family of one soldier said he did not see those injured in Operation Epic Fury. A White House spokesperson declined to explain why.
The Iran war, launched by the US and Israel in late February, has left 409 American troops injured and 13 dead, per the Pentagon. Many wounded have been treated at Walter Reed, including six service members hurt in a March Iranian drone strike on an Army outpost in Kuwait.
Among them is Sergeant Cory Hicks, who suffered a traumatic brain injury, a severed spleen and a lacerated kidney. “I lost six of my battle buddies who were sitting pretty close to me and that's a struggle within itself,” he told CBS News last month.
Trump has previously faced criticism for comments about wounded troops. In 2024, he downplayed injuries from an Iranian airstrike, saying he did not consider them “very serious.” He has also denied a 2020 Atlantic report that he called fallen soldiers “losers” and “suckers.”
