Names and faces

Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that President Donald Trump initially erred by not acknowledging the late U.S. Sen. John McCain’s service to the country, also saying that Trump’s reversal in a later statement undid some of the damage. Carter, who turns 94 in October, weighed in on Trump’s response to the Arizona Republican’s death in a pair of TV appearances in which he also promoted his post-presidency work with Habitat for Humanity. “I thought that President Trump made a mistake at first” by issuing a tweet that made no mention of McCain’s service, Carter told Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto. After McCain’s death on Saturday at the age of 81, Trump rejected the advice of top aides who advocated releasing an official statement that gave the decorated Vietnam War POW plaudits for his military and Senate service and called him a “hero.” Trump instead offered words of condolence to the senator’s family in a tweet that made no mention of McCain’s storied service in the military and on Capitol Hill. As criticism mounted, Trump reversed course and said he respected McCain’s years of public service and ordered that flags be lowered to half-staff until McCain’s burial, a reversal that came hours after flags were raised to full-staff early Monday. “I think his last statement that I read yesterday has basically corrected” his initial response, Carter said. But, in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Carter elaborated further, saying that the proclamation Trump issued on Monday was “still not as enthusiastic as it should be.” Ben Kingsley said he didn’t portray Adolf Eichmann out of love or admiration. Rather, he wanted to “nail him to the gates of Auschwitz.” The Oscar-winning Kingsley, who has tackled historical figures before, including Mahatma Gandhi, Otto Frank and Simon Wiesenthal, said playing Eichmann in Operation Finale produced an entirely different feeling in him. “With Gandhi, I loved him. With Simon, I loved him. With Otto, I loved him. With Itzhak [Stern], I loved him. But him — I’ll nail you to the gates of Auschwitz. I’ll put you up there so everyone can see what you did, what you stood for and who you are,” Kingsley said in an interview. The movie tells the story of a team of Mossad agents who traveled to Argentina to capture and smuggle Eichmann, wanted for war crimes, out of the country to bring him to justice in Israel. “I put him into the camera for you to judge him, for you to see. I’ve let go of him and I dedicated my performance to Elie Wiesel, and the millions who lost their lives under his command,” Kingsley said. The film, which hits theaters today, also stars Oscar Isaac, Nick Kroll, Melanie Laurent, Lior Raz and Joe Alwyn.

Carter

Kingsley