Trump isn't Bothered

The simple story is that what happened to John McCain, a pilot shot down and captured by the Viet Cong, is a story of extraordinary military awareness and courage--he could have received preferential treatment, and could have received superior medical care stateside that might have been far better than the treatment he had. He might have been able to be reunited with his family and avoid five years of imprisonment, torture, and various levels of fuckery--but he chose not to, because even if he was an Admiral's son, he understood that getting preferential treatment was conduct unbecoming the officer that he was. He dealt with the hand war put in front of him. It's really hard to take away from that--it was decency, leadership, and an assertion of principal hard to fathom.  It was understanding that no matter how long the road in front of him as a POW, he was setting an example.

I don't always agree with John McCain, the politician. But do I respect the hell out of John McCain, the POW? Of course. You can't not. He looked at a possibility of forever in enemy hands, and he just dealt with it. He stared agony in the face. He lost years off his life.


Donald Trump was a silver-spoon asshole who knows shit about what John  McCain went through. Donald Trump's idea that he likes people who weren't captured appalls me--really? Knowing anything about the POW community, would he say that?


He doesn't get it. Veteran Rick Perry is among those who pushed back pretty well on what he said. I think Lindsay Graham also addressed this bullshit pretty well.

But I don't know that Trump will necessarily suffer in the polls, even if I kind of think of him as a fake candidate. I don't know how someone basically craps on captured Vietnam-era vets and still thinks middle-class people, whose families likely have veterans, will have any support for him.

I've basically moved from Donald Trump is a media poser, to he should just go to hell. He might think he can recover from what he said, but that's just crap.  Trump is doing this very wrong.

UPDATE: Aaaaand, Trump has given out Sen. Graham's cell phone number during a speech in retaliation for being called a "jackass". This wins him another news cycle. He doesn't play by normal political rules, and it's working. Even if the things getting him attention seem to point directly to a poor temperament for politics.