USA TODAY International Edition
‘ I do not need to be lectured’
Trump fires back in his own words.
Donald Trump — who loves to think of himself as the biggest, the brashest and the richest — might be going for some sort of new record: the candidate to insult the most people in the shortest time while seeking a presidential nomination.
Announcing his candidacy last month, the billionaire businessman slammed Mexican immigrants as drug dealers, criminals and rapists. On Saturday, he insulted one of the nation’s iconic war heroes, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and by extension all American prisoners of war. You’ve got to wonder who’s next on the long list of people The Donald perceives as losers. Senior citizens? Widows and orphans?
We had hoped to pay no attention to the Trump sideshow. But that became harder to do when he jumped to the top of the recent USA TODAY/ Suffolk and Fox News polls of Republican voters. Then, over the weekend, Trump’s big mouth became, not surprisingly, impossible to ignore.
During an appearance at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump proclaimed that McCain, the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee, is “not a war hero,” adding derisively, “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
Not to put a fine point on it, but McCain, a Navy fighter pilot who withstood torture and more than two years in solitary confinement as a POW, did a few things in Vietnam before being captured. He flew low- altitude bombing runs. On his 23rd mission in 1967, he was shot down and suffered a broken leg and two broken arms when he ejected, injuries that still trouble him today. While a prisoner, he famously declined an early release because it would have put him ahead of POWs who were captured earlier.
And what did Trump, who was old enough to serve in Vietnam, do during the war? He had student deferments for four years until 1968, when he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. After college, he told reporters Saturday, he got a medical deferment “because of my feet. I had a bone spur.” Which foot? Trump told reporters to look up the records. After that deferment, Trump got a high number in the draft lottery. Lucky guy.
If nothing else, Trump’s appalling outburst showed that his Republican rivals — most of whom stayed embarrassingly silent when he maligned Mexicans — have some behavioral line that shouldn’t be crossed. Until Trump apologizes, said former Texas governor Rick Perry, “I don’t think he has the character or the temperament to hold the highest position in this country.”
To say the least. On Sunday, Trump doubled down on his attacks on McCain. Character and temperament are not Trump’s strong suits.
Like meteors that flash across the sky and burn out, flawed candidates have a way of self- destructing. That’s one of the few benefits of our endless, grueling presidential campaigns.
The classless attack on McCain might or might not mark the end of Trump’s presidential ambitions. This much is assured: The mouth will keep moving, and one day it will open wide and swallow his candidacy whole.