Posted on 07/20/2015 3:41:21 AM PDT by rickyrikardo
It was the spring of 1968 and Donald Trump had it good.
He was 21 years old and handsome with a full head of hair. He avoided the Vietnam War draft on his way to earning an Ivy League degree. He was fond of fancy dinners, beautiful women and outrageous clubs. Most important, he had a job in his father’s real estate company and a brain bursting with money-making ideas that would make him a billionaire.
“When I graduated from college, I had a net worth of perhaps $200,000,” he said in his 1987 autobiography “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” written with Tony Schwartz. (That’s about $1.4 million in 2015 dollars.) “I had my eye on Manhattan.”
More than 8,000 miles away, John McCain sat in a tiny, squalid North Vietnamese prison cell. The Navy pilot’s body was broken from a plane crash, starvation, botched operations and months of torture.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
As I said, I know several, personally. I have asked and you are quite right. One or two don’t care much for McCain, but that attitude may not come from Hanoi. Like many professional military officers, they don’t like how he leveraged with POW status into a political career. I’m in that crowd, but I can’t speak to his POW days.
Huh? Trump was ASKED about McCain, in my understanding. Was it Trump who brought up McCain in a devate so he could then say something??
This entire effort is to stop the immigration discussion.
I was born in 1964. I registered for the Selective Service in 1982. I never got a card. Did they hand out cards?
Is McCain tired of his media buddies alternately patting him on the back and throwing him under the bus yet?
I am your age, and like you I never got a card. You went to the post office and filled one out, and that was that.
I do remember McCain said he was told to go below deck as the flames spread, and he was evacuated to another carrier later in the day. However, plenty of his fellow pilots joined the chiefs and the junior sailors on the hose lines, so Trump might have questioned why McCain didn't participate with the fire-fighting teams that saved the ships.
Likewise, McCain's recent performance on the Senate Armed Services Committee is fair game; he's done nothing, both as chair and ranking member, while sequestration has gutted our armed forces. He's supporting the "new" military retirement system that reduces the 20-year pension from 50% to 40% of base pay, and creates a mandatory 401K plan that will force junior troops to choose between making their contribution and paying the bills (Remember: the typical military retiree is an E-6 who gets about $1600 a month after taxes and deductions). He also did nothing about the VA scandal except make a few speeches.
McCain's record in Libya and Syria are fair game as well. This is where Trump needs to be focusing his criticism. Dismissing McCain's heroism in Hanoi is nothing short of idiocy, particularly when Trump (like millions of other young Americans) played the deferment game to avoid military service. Besides, if Trump is going to slam McCain for being a mediocre pilot and getting shot down (which is open to debate), then you're making the same critique of men like Jim Stockdale, Jeremiah Denton, Robbie Risner and Leo Thorsness, among others. Sorry, that argument simply won't hold water.
As my father is fond of saying, Trump is letting his mouth overload his brain. He desperately needs someone who can channel and focus his broadsides, and keep them directed at targets for legitimate criticism.
McCain did not start the fire on the Forrestal. It's an urban legend that has been making the rounds for years and is demonstrably false.
lol .... with his tranny nanny and islamic coloring books
He was five years old.
There are a million reasons to despise Obama, but him “not showing a legitimate draft card” isn’t one of them. The draft ended many years before he was draft eligible.
I agree. He is not exactly the archetype of the self-made man.
No, it does not, in my opinion.
I do not think Trump should have made his comments either.
The ‘presidential’ response to the “but he’s a war hero” comment made to him by the interviewer would have been: “Yes, he fought bravely for this country. But what does that have to do with him calling my supporters crazies?”
Same here.
Same year of birth, same year of registration, same lack of issuance of a “draft card”.
I don’t care for the guy, but John McCain was as responsible for the Forrestal fire as you were.
The missile that started the fire came from the Phantom across from McCain and White.
However, I do think John McCain has behaved dishonorably as a U.S. senator. My own eyes and ears tell me that.
When is the last time the Compost wrote a story about the VA scandal?
Trump did not bring it up. The Luntz character did. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0718/Trump-criticizes-John-McCain-for-being-captured-in-Vietnam-video
So, while this article claims McInsane knows what a POW goes through because he was one, McInsane prevented the US from going back and getting the rest of our POWs and instead campaigned to give Vietnam Most Favored Nation status.
You should be saying that to Frank Luntz.
it was 50 damn years ago and the world today is coming apart rapidly as we speak..
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