Trump never misses a chance to debase himself
The world is full of heroes, many of whom are never known beyond their families, their communities. John McCain, who was first to admit his own flaws and frailties, was a colossus of valour.
Not just because he spent five and a half years as a tortured prisoner of the Vietcong — but because, when it mattered most, he rose above partisanship and rabid polarizing animus.
A political maverick who twice failed in a bid for the U.S. presidency — his selection of Sarah Palin for VP among his most illadvised gambits — McCain spent six decades serving his nation. McCain: Hero.
Donald Trump: Zero. What a shallow, petulant wreck of a man is the president of the United States. Bitter and vengeful to the end.
It may indeed have been hypocritical for Trump — his initial response to McCain’s death from brain cancer on Saturday limited to a 21-word tweet that made no mention of the senator as either a war hero or decades of public service — to have waxed more eloquently. But only the most churlish — and Trump knows churl — would have criticized him for it.
Trump revels in chaos. He is a pathological liar. His pettiness is exceeded only by his deceitfulness, zigzagging with dodges and denials, endlessly fulminating or praising himself on Twitter in the early morning hours.
On Monday, during a media session announcing a new trade agreement with Mexico — Canada on the NAFTA negotiations sideline — Trump, stone-faced, studiously ignored shouted questions from journalists about McCain’s legacy, while aides drowned out the questioning, much the same way that “clapout” minions step on reporters at Premier Doug Ford’s press conferences.
Not until late Monday, after two days of intense blowback, including scathing admonishment from veterans’ groups, did Trump grudgingly offer a more fulsome tribute, also signing a proclamation to fly the flag over the White House at half-mast until McCain is interred on Saturday. That flag — which represents the country, not Trump — had been lowered Saturday and raised to full-staff Monday morning.
Trump never misses an opportunity to debase himself and that flag.
This, the president who disputed McCain’s warrior courage during the presidential campaign, deriding the decorated veteran as “not a war hero” because he’d spent all those years in captivity. “I like people that weren’t captured.”
But that was not the first time Trump — who five times deferred the Vietnam War draft, once on medical grounds for bone spurs in his feet — had mocked McCain’s war record.
In these recent days, the president has single-handedly turned McCain’s death into a political firestorm all about Trump. That may have briefly pushed his tangle of legal issues off the front pages — last week was a disaster for the White House — but he actually antagonized the ultrapatriotic base that helped secure his presidential victory. Hence the rare reversal.
It was McCain who walked slowly onto the floor of the Senate chamber last July, after he’d been diagnosed with brain cancer, and voted thumbs-down to permanently repeal Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, leaving Trump’s signature legislation in tatters.
It was McCain who fought to have a report on American use of torture after 9/11 released because “the American people have a right — indeed a responsibility — to know what was done in their name.”
It was McCain who memorably released a statement to the Pakistani-American Khans, who son was killed in Iraq and then found themselves attacked by Trump: “Thank you for immigrating to America. We’re a better country because of you.”
There were demerits on the other side of the ledger, of course. But McCain was usually a voice of sanity within a party that has lost its marbles.
Trump came to loathe McCain who often gave as good as he got. In July, following Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, McCain slammed that awful joint press conference as “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in history.
McCain left express instructions that Trump not attend his funeral. He asked that presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama deliver eulogies.
How will Trump be remembered, when his time comes? All material in this publication is the property of SaltWire Network., and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior consent of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for statements or claims by advertisers. The publisher shall not be liable for slight changes of typographical efforts that do not lessen the value of an advertisement or for omitting to publish an advertisement. Liability is strictly limited to the publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue or the refund of any monies paid for that advertisement.