Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump remarked that Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is “a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured” at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa on Saturday.
Trump was asked about political correctness and previous remarks where he called McCain a “dummy.” Trump answered by first talking about his rally in Phoenix, which he said was attended by “wonderful, great Americans.” He continued, “John McCain goes, [paraphrasing] ‘Oh, boy, Trump makes my life difficult. He had 15,000 crazies show up.’ He called them all crazy. I said, ‘They weren’t crazy. They were great Americans.’ These people, if you were to see these people you — I know what crazy is. I know all about crazies, these weren’t crazy. So, he insulted me, and he insulted everybody in that room. And I said, ‘Somebody should run against John McCain who has been, you know, in my opinion, not so hot.’ And I supported him, I supported him for president. I raised a million dollars for him, that’s a lot of money. I supported him. He lost, he let us down, but, you know, he lost. So, I’ve never liked him as much after that, because I don’t like losers.”
Frank Luntz, who was leading the Q&A session, repeatedly protested, “He’s a war hero.” Trump responded, “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, okay? I hate to tell you.” Trump re-iterated, “He’s a war hero because he was capture, okay? You can have — and I believe — perhaps he’s a war hero, but right now, he said some very bad things about a lot of people. So, what I said is, John McCain, I disagree with him, that these people aren’t crazy. And, very importantly, and I speak the truth, he graduated last in his class at Annapolis. So I said, nobody knows that. I said he graduated last or second to last — he graduated last in his class at Annapolis. And he was upset. I say, ‘What? For telling the truth?’ See, you’re not you’re supposed to say that somebody graduated last or second to last in their class, because you’re supposed to be, like Frank says, very nice. Folks, I want to make America great again. We want to get down to brass tacks. We don’t want to listen to his stuff with being politically correct, and everything has to — we have a lot of work to do. Frank, the other day, Hillary Clinton got up and she said, [paraphrasing] ‘I didn’t like Mr. Trump’s tone.’ We have people, Christians being — having their heads cut off in the Middle East. We have people dying all over border, that — where I was right, 100% right. We have all of this, like, medieval times. And she said, [paraphrasing] ‘I didn’t like his tone.’ And you know who else said that? Jeb Bush, [paraphrasing] ‘I didn’t like his tone.’ What does it have to do with tone? We want results. This group wants results. We don’t want tone.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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