Who to blame over USS McCain insult?
It was “not unreasonable,” the White House chief of staff says, for a member of President Donald Trump’s advance team to ask that the USS John S. McCain be hidden during Trump’s recent visit to Japan.
I agree.
It was “not unreasonable” that a young staffer would see the M word emblazoned on a warship and hyperventilate.
“Not unreasonable” that he (or she) would ask that the venerated name of a Navy pilot shot down over north Vietnam, held a prisoner of war and tortured for five and a half years be removed lest it scald the presidential eyeballs.
“The fact that some 23-, 24-year-old person on the advance team went to that site and said, ‘Oh my goodness, here’s the John McCain, we all know how the president feels about the former senator, maybe that’s not the best backdrop, can somebody look into moving it?’ That’s not an unreasonable thing to ask,” Mick Mulvaney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“The president’s feeling towards the former senator are well-known. They are well-known throughout the office, they are well-known in the media, but to think you’re going to get fired over this is silly.”
Not at all unreasonable that a staffer would make such a request, given where he (or she) works.
And isn’t that a sad and pathetic thing?
That a young staffer would assume the president of the United States would be offended by seeing the name McCAIN on a Navy warship?
Is there anybody who believes that young staffer was wrong? Anybody?
Sen. McCain, during his life, bested Trump in every one of their battles. In his final words, as in his final year, McCain urged us to remember who we are.
“We are 325 million opinionated, vociferous individuals,” he said in a statement released after his death. “We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country …” If only.
McCain has continued to best Trump in the nine months since his death as one man, with the passing of time, seems more and more a giant and the other … not.
So, yeah, I agree with Trump’s chief of staff. There’s no way that young staffer should be fired or even disciplined.
“We think it’s much ado about nothing,” Mulvaney said on Fox News on Sunday.
Oh, it’s much ado about something. But it’s not about a low-level staffer simply carrying out what he believes are the wishes of a president who has signaled what he wants with every postmortem dig at a dead man, every sign of disrespect. Every egotistical outburst.
In fact, I seem to recall a different president who might suggest that the buck stops …