UPDATE BELOW
"DEEP-FRIED YAHOO-ISM"
Trump on Senator John McCain:
“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
From Politicususa:
Donald Trump, Who Deferred His Way out of Combat, Attacks John McCain’s War Hero Status
"It is a fact that John McCain got shot down. It is a fact that he did not perform heroic deeds of daring-do in the air, like a Manfred von Richthofen, or an Eddy Rickenbacker, or Pappy Boyington. But he did survive five years of hellish conditions in a North Vietnamese prison camp, the “Hanoi Hilton.” He did serve his country. Unlike Donald Trump.
While McCain was serving his country, risking his life in a war, Donald Trump was receiving deferments (in 1964, 1965, 1966, and 1968) to stay out of that war. Not, as Trump once claimed, because he had high lottery numbers.
It does not matter how good a pilot McCain was, or how or why he was shot down. What matters is that he was there, and Trump was not.
Think what you will of John McCain, or even of Rick Perry and Jeb Bush. If there is a man on the planet who does not have the right to question McCain’s war deeds, it is Donald Trump."
A sampling from Tea Party blogs of their fawning over Trump who denigrated John McCain's military service:
"Say what you will about Donald Trump,I respect him and he has taken something very dear and precious away from the MSM, the Narrative. And he's speaking for me right now..I must confess this: Unlike past elections where I have argued vociferously for casting a vote for ANY Republican over 3rd party, let me say that, if Trump rens[sic] as a 3rd party candidate, he has my vote."
"PRESIDENT TRUMP
Get Used To It!"
"As for what you said about The Donald, he sure maked[sic] a fool out of Anderson Cooper and with Katy Tur. as well, he made her look like the Idiot she sounded like.."
UPDATE:
Why continue to report on Trump? Because right now he represents the Republican Party and who they admire. The more outrageous he is, the more support he gains from the political party that wants to win the White House in the next presidential election.
Look carefully at who they're supporting for that job: A guy who bragged that he'd build a wall on our border and make Mexico pay for it, and who said he'd bomb the oil fields of Iraq as a way of defeating ISIS.
This article by Leonard Pitts, Jr., of the Miami Herald explains the GOP's fascination with Trump:
"...don’t let anyone tell you it means nothing that Donald Trump has surged to the top of the Republican field, according to a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll.
Don’t let anybody say we ought not note with alarm the fact that 17 percent of Republicans think this loud-mouthed, attention-seeking self-aggrandizing carny barker is fit to be president.
Trump has climbed six percentage points since June, vaulting ahead of Jeb Bush, who remained steady at 14 percent. The billionaire developer and reality-show host did this because of, not despite, a portfolio of absurd promises, xenophobic rhetoric and preposterous assertions. He’s the guy who’s going to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep the “rapists” out — and somehow make Mexico pay for it.
He’s the guy who’s going to bomb the oil fields of Iraq as a way of defeating ISIS. He’s the guy who’s still not sure Barack Obama was born in the USA. He’s the guy who says our gross domestic product has fallen below zero (it hasn’t), and American nukes don’t work (they do). ...
Trump is No. 1? Sure. Why not? Didn’t he promise to build that wall and make Mexico pay for it? There you go, right? Immigration solved, right?
Well...no. But the very fact that so many of us apparently think so provides a vivid illustration of the anti-intellectualism and deep-fried yahoo-ism now holding the Republican Party hostage."
Deep-fried yahoo-ism: A perfect description of today's Goopers and the T-GOP.
40 comments:
Trump says what they think but don't have the guts to say.
As far as I'm concerned, McCain is and always will be a true hero. He had a chance to go home and refused to take it if his men weren't freed with him.
OT.
Speaking of the heroes of Viet Nam, which in and of itself is fraught with the perils of the utter futility and enormous human cost to this exercise in American hubris and vanity, yet any soldier who saved the life of another or showed compassion to any person in this horrible conflict remains a hero. One of the real guys who did something incredible was Randy "Duke" Cunningham. He was our modern Eddie Rickenbacker. He even had a Charlie counterpart. A Viet Cong Navy flying ace. They were involved in historic dogfights. Incredible feats of derring-do and flying bravery. These dogfights were carefully studied and taught in a special course at the USAF all the way up until the famous pay-to-play scandal with Randy and the defense contractors. Still, Randy remained an American hero, because he lent his voice to the fight against U.S. sponsored torture.
McCain, while prisoner, showed enormous character for not leaving his fellow prisoners behind. Unfortunately, he didn't learn from that experience: "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" sung to the Beach Boys during his campaign. And over the past couple of decades, and despite his tortured experience in Viet Nam, he has shown he is a war monger, not a hero in the truest sense of the word. Trump is right, McCain is not smart enough to have learned from his experiences. But Trump's in no position to admonish McCain on this issue. A soldier caught in the heat of battle doesn't necessarily negate an act of heroism, but it doesn't denote heroism either. Trump's a fool. They are self-serving politicians, and we'd be just as foolish to expect anything else of them. While Trump's words are offensive, what is more important is the power McCain has had as a Senator and the idiotic and destructive policy decisions he has and continues to put forth.
This Randy "Duke" Cunningham ?
All who served and died in Nam were heroes. Period. Done deal.
Having said that what Trump is saying is he admires as heroes those who had the skills and cunning to excape capture. Twisted in a way but it is The Donald after all.
Having said that what Trump is saying is he admires as heroes those who had the skills and cunning to excape capture
It's hard to "escape capture" when your plane is shot down in f**king enemy territory. TRump is a flaming assh**e. He said what he said...if he meant someting else he should have said it differently. No one needs to defend that assh**e.
Trump is Trump, he loves that he can get people pissed off and crazy over stuff he says. He probably measures success by how many are pissed off. Say what you will he is controlling the the discussion. For him it's Mission Accomplished.
As he has a great belly laugh. In other words perhaps it would br best if he was just ignored.
Here's what I don't get Shaw...
Trump's criticism of McCain drew a quick rebuke from other GOP candidates and the party in general. That's great. They stood up for one of their own.
But if we contrast that with how they handled Trump's remarks about Mexican people, we can certainly see which group they are wooing votes from.
RN, you can't ignore a presidential candidate who, among GOP primary voters, is polling 68% favorably. That's ignoring a reality. He may be a gigantic joke, but he's a joke that a majority of Republicans like. Right now he's exposing the darkest underbelly of the GOP, and the American people are listening.
"Trump’s June 16 announcement speech included provocative comments on illegal immigration that people are still talking about a month later, including the suggestion that the Mexican government is sending criminals and rapists to the United States. Whatever the blowback, his views resonate with many: 44 percent of voters think Trump is “basically right” on the issue. A 53-percent majority disagrees. Among Republican primary voters, 68 percent say he is right."
Dave, the GOP somewhat fetishizes anything to do with the military.
Mexicans? Not so much. The GOP base buys into stereo-types and what their leaders feed them.
Interesting reporting on TRump by The Guardian:
"The socially conservative gathering also meant Trump was pressed on his personal faith. While he talked at length about attending church and his love of family, he did say to a somewhat surprised crowd that he had never asked God for forgiveness."
That'll play well with the evangelicals, won't it? Trump never asked god for forgiveness because either he's never sinned or he doesn't believe one god should ask another god for forgiveness.
Ignore Trump? No. Make sure America is paying attention to who the Rethugs believe represents their ideas and gets their approval. Keep that fact alive.
Yeh, you gotta make sure people know that Trump is the Republican Party. They the party that gives him the lead in the polls, so they approve of his anti-POW attack on McCain. Didn't think I'd live to see the day that the Republican Party would lsupport a jerk like Trump over the military but its good see Donald "tell it like it is."
Great day for conservatives; they spent the day defending Trump when he attacked McCain and all POWs and they defended the KKK rally at Columbia, South Carolina.
Chuckling. The more the left throws at The Donald the more the right (68%) loonies will love and support him.
But do carry on.
Give me a break. The Repubs are angry over what Trump said about POW McCain? They didn’t worry about smearing John Kerry, Max Cleland, and Tammy Duckworth and their service to their country. What g-d hypocrites. the only ‘moral consistency’ to expect from this crowd is how predictably consistent their moral inconsistency and hypocrisy is.
The Left isn't "throwing" anything at Trump. He's throwing it at himself everytime he opens his mouth, which is often. He can't help himself.
All the left is doing is recording his inflammatory, racist, anti-military remarks. The left couldn't have hoped for a better clown than Donald Trump to show America how low in the muck the right has sunk that it believes this billionaire sack of fetid fumes has any merit.
Many of McCains fellow soldiers, at the time, questioned McCain's war hero status.
Now, now: "billionaire sack of fetid fumes: is way too kind.
"The more the left throws at The Donald the more the right (68%) loonies will love and support him."
The more the right loonies love and support Trump, the better it is for the left. They should do all they can to have the GOP defined by Trump.
"Many of McCains fellow soldiers, at the time, questioned McCain's war hero status."
I don't know the details of McCain's 5 1/2 years as POW, but what we do know is that he was given the chance for an early release from the prison camp (because he was an admiral's son), and he refused it:
"...when "The Cat," the commander of the prison camps, offered him early release, according to a gripping Arizona Republic profile from 2007:
McCain realized that the Code of Conduct gave him no choice. [Everett] Alvarez, who was being held elsewhere, was supposed to be the first man released.
"I just knew it wasn't the right thing to do," he said. "I knew that they wouldn't have offered it to me if I hadn't been the son of an admiral.
"I just didn't think it was the honorable thing to do."...McCain calmly told The Cat that the prisoners must be released in the order they were captured, starting with Alvarez. [The Arizona Republic]"
Trump, who avoided serving in the Vietnam War through four student deferments and one medical one, later tried to clarify his remarks."
What that means is that Trump saw the universal outrage (except Ted Cruz) over his callous remarks so he tried to walk them back like a good little weasel would.
BB-Idaho: Well I try not to be too harsh in my estimation of Trump. ;)
On another note, are the righties aware of this:
When Clinton last ran for office, Trump was torn between supporting her and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. ” They’re both terrific people, and I hope they both get the nomination,” he told CNN in 2007, adding that he thought Clinton would surround herself with good people to negotiate a deal with Iran. A year later, Trump wondered publicly why Clinton wasn’t chosen as President Obama’s running-mate.
In 2012, as Obama was running for re-election, Trump called Clinton “terrific” again in an interview with Fox News, saying she performed well as Secretary of State.
“Hillary Clinton I think is a terrific woman,” he told Greta Van Susteren. “I am biased because I have known her for years. I live in New York. She lives in New York. I really like her and her husband both a lot. I think she really works hard. And I think, again, she’s given an agenda, it is not all of her, but I think she really works hard and I think she does a good job. I like her.
Note to Clinton: I don't think I would advertise the fact that Trump liked me if I were you.
RN: Chuckling. The more the left throws at The Donald the more the right (68%) loonies will love and support him.
Are Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and the Republican National Committee "the left"? I don't think so, but all of those have condemned Trump's remarks in forceful terms.
Yet many rank-and-file Republican party members have defended and supported Trump's statements.
This is nothing to do with the left at all. It's a staggering, shocking revelation that the average, ordinary Republican party member may actually be even more evil and disgusting than the grossly corrupted leadership of the party.
There has never been a more dramatic and final proof of the falsity of any attempt at claiming moral equivalence between the two parties.
He is doing a bang up job of advertising it. BTW, didn't he attend Chelsea's wedding?
Jerry,
About the time Randy was ready to report to prison, the local free press, the San Diego Reader, published a tribute to his flying skills. Unfortunately, that article is not available on-line. It had a graphic of the famous dogfight, his last kill that made him the first "ace" of the Viet Nam conflict. Some research now suggests that he did not actually kill the legendary, "Colonel Toon", the Vietnamese pilot who flew a MiG so successfully during the war.
He did, however shoot down several MiGs and ran up a very impressive flying record. When he came home, he was a Top Gun instructor at Miramar. He was Air Force and Navy legend and a subject of course study, right up until the time of his conviction. He also used to be my congressman. He sent a signed letter back in response to my wife's inquiry about his position on torture during the dark years around 2006. He unequivocally condemned any form of torture, much in the same way that McCain always has. Here is his story.
http://acepilots.com/vietnam/cunningham.html
Trump hypocrisy...criticizing McCain for saying Trump brought out the crazies in the Repub. Party. Trump said calling all his supporters crazy was disrespectful, completely forgetting what he said about Mexico and Mexicans, except some he assumed were good people.
After reading comments here -- (I hadn't commented on this thread), but read it all and was stunned at the GOP's lack of understanding of what Trump represents in their Party. You wrote about it in the body of the blog post. More people should pay attention.
Shaw, thanks for the Leonard Pitts link. Hadn't seen that column. Here's one for you.
“The Cong were after me,” Trump said, visibly stirred by the memory. “And then, just in the nick of time, I got my deferment.”
The former reality-show star said he had never shared his record as a war hero before because “I don’t like to boast.”
“Those brave Americans who, like me, avoided being captured by not serving at all—we are the true heroes,” he said.
Trump’s tale of valor appeared to move many members of his audience, some of whom waited in line after his speech to thank him for his lack of service.
He had bone spurs but was able to play baseball, tennis and squash in college.
John Bush defended McCain against Trump's attack on veterans by saying ALL veterans deserve our respect. What a Republican...I mean HYPOCRITE! But I repeat myself:
"As Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman then pointedly asked, “Yeah. Just like the respect that John Kerry got in ’04?”
It turns out that in 2005, Jeb thought one veteran in particular should be attacked. He even thanked other veterans for swiftboating John Kerry, whom Republican conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, who has never served his country, decided to accuse of cowardice in order to keep him out of the White House:
I look forward to the media asking him about his double standard when hell freezes over, which is about how long it will take for any of them to call out the GOP for being a bunch of opportunist, lying, pearl clutching hypocrites. Here's a copy of that letter from Bush for anyone that would like to read it."
One thing we can count on from these sunshine veteran "supporters" is that their support and respect is only for their tribe. And that is disgusting.
"I don't know the details of McCain's 5 1/2 years as POW" No one has to know those details. But what we should do is let the American people know in detail what a gigantic jackass Trump is each time he opens his pie-hole. He proves everyday that facts are not important to him and his followers, just stirring up the basest of the GOP base. And he's done a great job in that area.
Kevin,
That may be satire, but it reads more like the real thing! LOL!
WASHINGTON -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said over the weekend that the next president of the United States needed to be prepared to take aggressive military action on their very first day in office, including against Iran.
---------
And I was worried La Trump is a stalking horse trying to make the rest of the field appear sane.
Found on a TGOPer blog:
"This is why Trump is doing so well in the polls. It’s not about him. It’s about a Party who has abandoned their conservative principles, a Party who has forgotten how to act like men, and a Party that wants to be loved so much they’re willing to be indistinguishable from Democrats.
Trump is the bold color.
The GOP establishment are the pale pastels.
It isn’t any more complicated than that."
So it's not about him? Man are these folks deluded. Every other word out of Trump's maw is about how rich he is, how the blacks love him, how the Latinos love him, how he'll fix things for the veterans (he never says how he's going to do anything, just how great he is.)
Plus that part up there about how the GOP forgot how to "act like men,"
So there it is. C'mon you sissy GOP wimmens, start acting like MEN so Republican guys can love (if you know what I mean) you more!
Scott "Koch" Walker: "...the next president of the United States needed to be prepared to take aggressive military action on their very first day in office, including against Iran."
We need to have every liberal/progressive blogger remind people through this nomination process that Scott "Koch" Walker wants to go to war with Iran!
Can't wait to hear him in a debate tell the American people about that "aggressive military action" he wants to have in the Middle East as soon as he's preznit.
It's Darth Cheney and Dubya deja vu all over again!
"Vote for the GOP ticket and we'll spend trillions more of your dollars while sending your sons and daughters off to the ME to fight another glorious war!"
Gawd. I hope Walker repeats that every time he's on stage or at a campaign stop!
"Walker Wants War!"
RNC press release after Trump's McCain attack: "There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably."
It's pretty rich for the party who constantly scream about the chaffing, liberty-stifling liberal-imposed straight jacket of political correctness to say, "There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage ... ". That seems like excommunication and banishment for saying something political that is not acceptably 'correct'.
But hypocrisy and inconsistency is consistent in the GOP. Do they ever listen to what they say?
"What Trump said about McCain is deeply offensive. What he said about Mexicans was stupid and nakedly racist. Most people not running for the Republican nomination would happily concede this. What’s instructive, though, is that GOP candidates felt comfortable critiquing one offense and not the other. And the reason is obvious: racism resonates with a large subset of the Republican base."
"Yes, cooler heads will soon prevail and some establishment candidate will carry the banner into battle. But don’t let that tempt you into being sanguine about this insane moment when the leader of the Republican field is a two-legged id with an incontinent mouth," Leonard Pitts Jr. says.
LOL!
"Forty years ago, John McCain was a war hero. Since then he's mostly been an asshole. The problem is you can't out-asshole Donald Trump. McCain is in the Superbowl of assholery and hopelessly outmatched. He was doing assholery-as-usual last week, sneering at Trump's supporters as "the crazies". On recent polls that's getting on for 20 per cent of the Republican vote. If 20 per cent of Republican "crazies" take the same umbrage at McCain's sneer that Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, Reince Preibus et al have taken on McCain's behalf at Trump's, then Hillary will be President with a Democratic Senate and maybe even House."
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."
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