LIKE ELIJAH PRICE, HE'S OSTEOENVIOUS:

Forget for a moment that Trump and the Republicans have been pushing, without evidence, conspiracy theories of massive election fraud. Trump's off-the-wall proposal to "go with" the election night totals would throw out a great number of military and overseas ballots, which are required by Florida law to be counted if they arrive by Friday, so long as they were postmarked by Nov. 6.

This comes after Trump on Saturday skipped a ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, where there are headstones for 2,289 U.S. troops, many of whom were killed in the bloody 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood. The names of more than 1,000 others who were never found are inscribed on a wall there. [...]

Meanwhile, now that the election is over, Trump is no longer talking about the supposed "invasion" of this country by a migrant caravan. But 5,600 U.S. troops are still having to live with the effects of the stunt he pulled, when he rushed them to the border to perform the vital mission of -- well, that still isn't exactly clear.

It is far from certain when, where or even if the destitute, footsore migrants will arrive. And yet the New York Times reported:

Instead of football with their families on this Veterans Day weekend, soldiers with the 19th Engineer Battalion, fresh from Fort Knox, Ky., were painstakingly webbing concertina wire on the banks of the Rio Grande, just beneath the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge.

Nearby, troops from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State were making sure a sick call tent was properly set up next to their aid station. And a few miles away, Staff Sgt. Juan Mendoza was directing traffic as his engineer support company from Fort Bragg, N.C., unloaded military vehicles.

Come Thanksgiving, they most likely will still be here.

Two thousand miles away, at the Pentagon, officials privately derided the deployment as an expensive waste of time and resources, and a morale killer to boot.

Leading up to the midterm vote on Tuesday, the military announced that the border mission would be called Operation Faithful Patriot. But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Election Day told officials to drop the name, and the Pentagon sent out a terse news release a day later saying the operation was now simply to be known as border support. The term "faithful patriot," officials said, had political overtones.

Though he is nearly two years into his presidency, Trump has yet to visit U.S. troops in a combat zone, something his four most recent predecessors all did. Last month, Trump, who has spent more than 100 days of his presidency golfing, told the Associated Press that he believed such a trip is not "overly necessary. I've been very busy with everything that's taking place here."

All of this perhaps should not be surprising, given how Trump as a candidate mocked the suffering of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a North Vietnamese prison and attacked a Gold Star family.

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