Tag: John McCain

Trump steps off the golf course and takes a swing at John McCain

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With the news cycle exploding over reports that Donald Trump called American soldiers who died to stop a German attack on Paris “losers” and “sucker,” it’s obvious that Trump had only one choice: Spend the day honoring America’s military by chasing a little white ball around his private golf course in Virginia.

But if Trump’s scheduled for Saturday seemed incredibly callous and tone deaf, his continuing reaction to the scandal is just as predictable as the way he shaves off just a few strokes on his scorecard. Trump’s most recent tweets starts off with a series of lies about all the great things he’s done for the military. A list that for some reason doesn’t include stealing the money that was meant to be used for housing, schools, and hospitals to be used for his nonexistent and useless “Wall.” Then Trump declared that The Atlantic author Jeffrey Goldberg was a “slimeball reporter” who was ruining all his hard work in doing things like the Veteran’s Choice bill that President Obama actually signed.

Trump also accused Goldberg of “making up a horrible charge” and said that he was “maybe working with disgruntled people.” Disgruntled people apparently covers any White House official because the statements first reported by Goldberg have been confirmed by The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, and Fox News. Not only that, Losergate is perfectly in line with everything Trump has said since before he was elected. Oh, and Trump couldn’t even make it two tweets without taking a swing at John McCain. Continue reading

Like McCain before him, Romney rebukes President Trump

2008 and 2012 presidential nominees have been most forceful GOP critics in the Senate

The greatest rebukes of Donald Trump’s presidency from the Republican side of the aisle have come from the two previous standard-bearers for the GOP.

When Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a freshman senator best known for being the 2012 Republican nominee for president, announced Wednesday on the Senate floor that he would vote to convict Trump of abuse of power, it evoked memories of the time when the late Arizona Sen. John McCain voted in 2017 to thwart the president’s desired repeal of the 2010 health care law.

McCain, a hero of the Vietnam War and the 2008 Republican nominee for president, cast his vote with a dramatic thumbs-down that the current occupant of the Oval Office has not forgotten. Trump has continued to allude to the vote, which doomed GOP plans to nix the health care law, particularly during campaign rallies. Continue reading.

The missing voice of John McCain in impeachment and Ukraine

Late senator was the foremost expert and advocate in Congress for the Eastern European nation

OPINION — If there was ever a time and a place where the voice of John McCain was missing from Congress, this is it — at the intersection of an impeachment, an election and a constitutional crisis.

The late Arizona Republican was one of the few members famously ready and willing to stand on a political island if he thought it was the right thing to do. So it’s easy to imagine him waiting in the well of the Senate to flash a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down on the fate of President Donald Trump, with cable pundits everywhere holding their breath until he did. Continue reading “The missing voice of John McCain in impeachment and Ukraine”

White House dramatically changes its story about Trump, USS McCain

It was just a few days ago when we learned about emails the White House sent to the U.S. Navy, directing military officials to move the USS John McCain “out of sight” ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to Japan. In the days that followed, the reaction from the president and his team has followed a circuitous path.

The initial response from the Trump administration was surprise and incredulity. For his part, the president told reporters on Thursday, “I would never have done that,” while insisting he wasn’t directly involved. By the end of the day, Trump turned to Twitter to say, in response to the reporting, “Looks like the story was an exaggeration, or even Fake News.”

Two days later, the Navy confirmed that the story wasn’t “fake” at all.

View the complete June 3 article by Steve Benen on the MSNBC website here.

Why Trump Can’t Stand Anything That Reminds Him Of John McCain

The guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain, “Big Bad John,” was christened in 1992 in honor of the U.S. Navy’s first father-son duo of four-star admirals, “Slew” and Jack. On July 12, 2018, their son and grandson respectively, retired Navy captain and U.S. Senator John S. McCain III was added to the official namesake of that Navy ship in a ceremony in Yokosuka, Japan. This American destroyer and its crew, as reported by The Wall Street Journal‘s Rebecca Ballhaus and Gordon Lubold, were told by Navy and Air Force brass — in response to a directive from the White House — that during President Donald Trump’s Memorial Day weekend visit to Japan, the USS John S. McCain needs to be kept “out of   sight.”
Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), West Point graduate, a major in the 82nd Airborne Division, and McCain’s erstwhile colleague on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the White House’s actions to avoid a presidential tantrum at the sight of the Navy destroyer honoring the American war hero and frequent Trump adversary “beyond petty” and “disgraceful.” Yielding to few in my admiration for senators McCain and Reed, I believe the actions of up-to-now anonymous White House staffers, feverishly working to avoid the wrath of their insecure boss, were entirely logical and even predictable.
Think about it: McCain’s biography is a public rebuke to all the values and the life of Donald J. Trump. In June of 1968, when Trump was graduating from the University of Pennsylvania — only to miraculously be found afflicted with bone spurs, which would prevent the athletic Trump from answering his country’s call to serve in the U.S. military — Navy pilot McCain, having sustained a broken leg, broken shoulders and cracked ribs at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, was in solitary confinement being tortured in a Hanoi prison.

View the complete June 2 article by Mark Shield on the National Memo website here.

Emails Confirm Pentagon Effort To Keep USS John McCain ‘Out Of Sight’

Earlier this week, Republican activist Meghan McCain reacted angrily after learning about the Wall Street Journal’s report that some people in the White House wanted to keep the USS John McCain out of sight during President Donald Trump’s visit to Japan, where he met with Prime Minster Shinzo Abe. And CNBC’s Amanda Macias is reporting that two sources have confirmed that a government e-mail shows coordinated White House efforts to keep the warship out of view.

In the e-mail, posted by Macias on Twitter, one of the directives is that the “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.”

There was considerable animosity between Trump and Sen. McCain, who was 81 when he died of brain cancer on August 25, 2018. Trump deeply resented the Vietnam veteran and former POW for helping to derail the GOP’s American Health Care Act, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare — and he in turn lambasted Trump vehemently after his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland in July 2018.

View the complete May 31 article by Alex Henderson on the National Memo website here.

Trump’s attacks on McCain exacerbate tensions with Senate GOP

President Trump’s disparaging attack on the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is upsetting Senate Republicans who see the repeated insults on a war hero and former pillar of the Senate as unnecessary and corrosive.

Trump has lashed out at McCain four times in the last five days, most recently at an event in Ohio on Wednesday where he spent a full five minutes on the senator — at one point even evoking the McCain’s state funeral.

“I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve,” Trump told workers, who went silent during the remarks, at a tank factory in Lima. “I don’t care about this, I didn’t get a thank you. That’s OK.”

View the complete March 21 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Trump blasts McCain, bemoans not getting ‘thank you’ for funeral

President Trump on Wednesday unleashed fresh criticism of John McCain, attacking the late GOP senator from Arizona for his connection to a dossier of claims about the president and Russia, his vote against a Republican effort to repeal ObamaCare and his support for the Iraq War.

Trump spent five full minutes jabbing at McCain during an official White House event intended to highlight manufacturing in Ohio. The barbs marked the fourth time in the last five days that Trump has criticized McCain, who died from brain cancer in August.

“I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don’t care about this, I didn’t get a thank you. That’s OK,” Trump told workers at a tank factory in Lima, Ohio.

View the complete March 20 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Trump: ‘I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be’

President Trump on Tuesday renewed his attacks on the late Sen. John McCain, calling his 2017 vote against repealing ObamaCare “disgraceful” and saying he will “never” be a fan of the Arizona Republican, who died last year.

Trump doubled down on his criticism when asked why he continued to deride McCain seven months after his death from brain cancer, despite blowback from the former senator’s family and supporters.

“I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

View the complete March 19 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.