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 ...
I agree with you completely, especially the performance in the U.S.S.
“Does anybody know Trump’s position on: abortion, gun rights, eminent domain, taxes, health care, defense, race, militarization of law enforcement, gay marriage, religious freedom, freedom of speech and association, etc.?
Does anybody care?”
Where have you been? Trump has spoken on most of these topics. Abortion = against; gun rights = for; taxes = we are taxed too much; health care = against Obamacare; defense = very pro defense; gay marriage = against; believes marriage is between a man and a woman only; religious freedom = for; freedom of speech and association = proponent of and practices free speech w/out PC all the time; don’t know about his positions specifically on race, militarization of law enforcement or eminent domain. Trump may have spoken about these last three issues and I just missed it, or maybe no one has asked him yet. Unknown.
Suspect most of the other 16 candidates have not spoken about all the issues you listed here either yet. The race is still young. The debates will clarify the candidates’ stances on all these issues. Trump has only been in the race about 3 weeks, although by all the press he has been getting, you’d think it was for a hundred years, lol.
Yes, it was an unforced error. Trump is creative; perhaps he can invite McCain to have a cup of coffee with him and take the personal issue off the table; agree to disagree about some policies while agreeing any Republican is better than Hillary.
So now McCain is the liberals’ saint, Trump is the devil, Barry was downgraded from the Messiah to Moses with a bad set of direction, and we’re all bitter clinging crazies.
When I was 19, we had two types of young men: the ones that volunteered for service (or just allowed themselves to be drafted) because a war was on, with vicious enemies (being supported by the entire Communist Bloc), good people to rescue and fine young men to serve alongside.
And then we had the cowardly, excuse-finding non-males who were perfectly fine with letting other young men take the risks in their places.
Sorry, but that's they way it is.
Yes, it was 50 years ago and the choices people made back then have paid forward. A large percentage of American males decided to save their skins - I mean "stood against an unjust war" - and their children are the ones happily accepting the Hope and Change that's upon us. We all have decisions to make and the decisions the draft-dodgers made all those years ago still resonate.
Compare Trump to Fred Smith. He invested his $4M inheritance in 1971, the same year Trump took control of the family company worth at the time $300M.
Fred built Fedex. His net worth is today rated at about $4B, the same as Trump’s.
To my mind Smith created a great deal more wealth than Trump, as he essentially created an entirely new industry and thus many thousands of jobs. Good jobs.
Those who didn't agree with the war weren't like today's youth, acting like it's a video game that doesn't involve them. We protested the war, we questioned it, our culture was against war as opposed to finding a better way.
I grant you that it got manipulated and turned around to the beginnings of everything politically correct and it's gotten us where we are today. But originally? The anti-war people were sincere. After WW2 and Korea, a lot of segments of the population were wondering if war would ever end, and wanted a better safer world.
Unless I’m quite mistaken, some of these positions appear to be pretty new for him.
If I remember correctly, a few years back he was against Obamacare because he favored a single-payer system like Canada’s.
“Thanks to your Granddad for his service to the nation! And I agree... Trump wouldn’t be fit to shine his shoes.. or those of any other veteran.”
Trump didn’t slam all Vets. He spit on John McCain individually. Because you don’t like him, you knock him here and use this war hero issue to do so. Do you anti-Trump people realize what you are doing? You are trying to bring down the only guy out there verbalizing what we all supposedly think on the issues, including what we think about John McCain and that has always been virtually totally negative. McCain is who now you are inadvertently defending.
Juan McCain has been on the wrong side of many, many conservative issues to this very moment, and he is up for reelection and will probably win, as usual. McCain’s war hero status is so dubious that many Vets have spoken out against him over the years. The men who shared captivity at the same time as McCain in Viet Nam have spoken about what he said and did during this time period. As far as I can see it was bordering on collaboration with the enemy while in captivity. Bowe Bergdahl comes to mind as a more modern example.
First thing McCain did upon his return to the U.S. was to dump his wife that stood by him for all the years of his captivity for a young girl from a wealthy family (like John Kerry did by marrying Theresa Heinz, heir to a fortune) to help further his political career. I might add he is seldom ever seen with his wife Cindy (another politically convenient marriage ala the Clintons and John Kerry and his wife). McCain spends most of his time with his partner in crime, Lindsay Graham.
The MSM was all over this on the Sunday morning political shows, of course saying nothing about what elicited this response from Trump, that Juan McCain, amnesty supporter maximus, called all supporters of Trump who attended his anti-immigration rally in Arizona, “Crazies”. That’s us folks; McCain is calling all of us Crazies.
And now some here are slamming Trump, broadening out what he said to try to make his comment an anti-Vet one, which it isn’t and you know it, and elevating Juan McCain once again in the public eye, a man who is happy with the military getting less funding, is against strong interrogation of terrorists we have captured, and speaks about helping Vets while doing very little for their actual benefit. Juan McCain is less supportive of Vets than Donald Trump will be, who is very pro-Vet and will actually fund and help them. And yet you are inadvertantly supporting the true skunk at the party, McCain.
Let’s just say that the MSM, the Dems, the pro-immigration people, the GOPe, all of them our alleged enemies, have banded together to try to knock Trump out of the race, along with some Freepers who can’t see the forest through the trees. If they succeed, our one populist voice, more concerned with Main Street rather than K Street and Wall Street, will indeed be silenced. We will be left with a bunch of milquetoast candidates, all the zing and excitement will go out of these primaries if Trump is gone, and enthusiasm will fizzle out in short order on the conservative side. We will be setting ourselves up for losing the Presidency once again, or ending up with the establishment’s choice, Jeb Bush, as our flag bearer and eventual President.
Our one voice (with the exception of Ted Cruz who just can’t seem to get traction in this race but at least he’s smart enough to figure out that Trump is out there speaking the truth on today’s major issues) is the designated target. He is leading in the polls and thus must be eliminated. Trump is the one man where a very concerted effort is being made by Trump’s enemies; at this very moment they are desperately banding together to try to get Trump out of the race NOW. If they succeed, I can assure you that at that point I will go back to pre-Trump mentality, meaning I will have very little further interest in these primaries, and my enthusiasm will dwindle to minimal as will that of many, many others.
Can’t you see what our enemies are trying to do here? They are all out there trying to silence the one man who says what we think, is a doer, and is a fighter. Trump is a brave man, he is losing a lot personally by having entered this fray, he didn’t have to do this but has because he is a patriot and is fighting tooth and nail as did our forefathers, for the American way of life.
If his enemies succeed in getting Trump out of the race, we conservatives will be diminished and the GOPe will have won, and we will end up with Bush who stands to gain the most from Trump’s removal from the race. Jeb Bush will end up winning the primaries because no one else has the money to win with, other than Bush or Trump. Of course Bush will be beholden to many for his win, whereas Trump will be beholden to no one, as he is self funded.
I might add Jeb Bush, and in fact most of the 16, possibly more soon, Pub candidates also have not served in the military. Most men in the U.S. don’t, and even if they wanted to, the military is constantly being downsized now by the likes of John McCain and Lindsay Graham, both of whom did serve.
You people must see what the true motives of our enemies are here in trying to bring down Trump. That motive is to get Jeb Bush in as the Pub candidate in the primaries, and thus maintain the status quo; the GOPe, corporatists and Wall Street interests, the globalists who will win whether either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush are President. It will be a choice of two peas out of the same elitist pod. And the American mainstream will continue to suffer, ... that’s YOU.
Did this rag endorse McCain over Obama in 2008?
In addition to my taking exception to Trump slamming the war record of a veteran (McCain’s RINOness and amnesty support notwithstanding), I have no trust in that SOB.
Have you reviewed his background and see what his stances are? He’s done more shifts than Sahara sands in a swirling snowstorm. But one thing he apparently HASN’T shifted on is his disdain for property rights. You do know he’s a fan of the Kelo decision (”100% supporting”), do you not? Are you also aware of his favoring “universal health care?” How does the fact his company hires illegals to build a hotel in DC comport with his railing on about illegals taking jobs from Americans?
Do you Trump backers not find the slightest concern about his closeness over the years to the Clintons? How about the fact his donations to topline democrats nearly match that of Republicans? I’ve heard it from other FReepers that he’s just playing the game and telling people what they need to hear in order to gain a business foothold in “blue” states and cities. Well, what, pray tell, is the assurance he’s not — once again — blowing smoke up every conservative’s a**, spouting all these bromides about illegals? And as for McCain’s marriage record, are you really going to defend Trump’s?
So, yes... I oppose Trump, and always will. I am FAR too jaded to place my trust in someone who has no core beliefs or principles other than self-aggrandizement and lining his pockets. The fortunate part of all this is he’s not up to what is for him a gargantuan task of keeping his mouth from causing him and his faux-candidacy to flame out.
snowstorm=sandstorm
The press told us that treasonous John F-T-A Kerry was a war hero too.
LOL! I’ve NEVER seen the left SO supportive of our troops, as they are of McStain’s military service, now. Funny that.
Without an apology - this article will be a huge political TELEVISION add contrasting Trump and his rich carefree lifestyle with video of Americans, yes captured Americans being tortured in Vietnam....Back and forth, Rich Young Clean Happy go lucky Trump in College party party party and Americans tortured tortured tortured . Deferment vs Draft, booze vs blood. And all through the political ad will be Trumps voice saying ‘I Like People Who Weren’t Captured’!
All because he wouldn’t apologize. Is it too late?
Time to be Presidential and show that you can recover from your mistakes. Apologize for your remarks. TODAY.
“He wasn’t corruptible then,” Mr. Day says, “and he’s not corruptible today.”
Keating 5
No, they weren't. The "antiwar" organizations were led by the pro-enemy People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ), a communist-front outfit and the New Mobe (formerly the National Mobilization for Peace), a Socialist Worker's Party front and both of those organizations were in direct contact with the enemy throughout.
Only the truly uninformed really thought that the antiwar movement was a "spontaneous uprising of conscience".
There were only two parts of the antiwar/pro-enemy movement: the communist sympathizers who wanted the US to lose that war and the willing dupes who were looking to avoid dangerous service. The children of those people are who make up the Obama team.
Yep... ditto for their modern-day fellow travelers, the occupods.
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