Donald Trump’s latest attack on John McCain makes me want to vomit
During his political career, I spent plenty of time alternately praising and criticizing John McCain for the various political moves he made. The McCain-Feingold reform legislation? Thumbs up. Elevating Sarah Palin and her whack job followers? Thumbs down. No one in politics should be immune from criticism, simply because they did something great in another walk of life. But what Donald Trump just said about John McCain makes me want to vomit.
Donald Trump said today that he was the one who threw John McCain a big funeral, and he’s upset that McCain didn’t bother to thank him for it. If Trump is referring to McCain’s body having honored in the Capitol, that was a decision made by Congress, not by Trump. And for the record, McCain earned it, after he spent six years rotting in a Vietnamese prison while serving his country. This was the same war which saw Trump faking a foot problem in order to dodge the draft on five separate occasions.
Trump keeps saying that he doesn’t respect John McCain because McCain cast the deciding vote against repealing Obamacare. But the reality is that McCain said all along that he would only vote for “repeal and replace” if it included a replacement that was better than Obamacare. When Trump and the GOP ended up proposing a “replacement” that didn’t exist, McCain stuck to his promise, and he voted it down. John McCain is the reason that tens of millions of Americans, including me, still have access to legitimate health insurance that covers preexisting conditions.
Donald Trump’s explanation is a bunch of crap, as he was attacking John McCain’s war hero status as far back as 2015, long before the fateful Obamacare vote. Not only are Trump’s attacks on McCain disingenuous and offensive, Trump is lying about the reason he’s attacking McCain. You just can’t get any lower than this – though Trump will surely find a way to do just that.
