Trump attacks McCain again: 'I didn’t get a thank you’ for approving late senator’s funeral

[jserraglio]

Trump attacks McCain again, saying he didn’t get a ‘thank you’ for approving late senator’s funeral

Washington Post

By Alex Horton

March 20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... c8b4e211bf

President Trump continued Wednesday to attack the late senator John McCain, even as a growing number of Republican senators rose to McCain’s defense, calling him an war hero and a patriot -- although most were careful not to criticize the president directly.

At a White House event at a tank manufacturing facility in Lima, Ohio, on Wednesday, Trump lashed out at McCain, saying, “I endorsed him at his request and I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve.”

“I don’t care about this,” Trump continued. "I didn’t get a thank you. That’s okay. We sent him on the way. But I wasn’t a fan of John McCain.”

Outbursts like Wednesday’s and those that have preceded it, were too much for Sen. Johnny Isakson to take. The Georgia Republican could not stand the “unthinkable” last year when the White House flag lowered — and then soon raised — its flag from half-staff to recognize the death of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

That was one moment among others that Isakson has said is a pattern of President Trump’s attacks on McCain. And after an escalation of bitter words from the president this week, Isakson took to the airwaves in a rare moment for his party: A stinging rebuke of Trump.

“Its deplorable what he said,” Isaskon said Wednesday on Georgia Public Broadcasting, as he decried the public tear down of McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent years in brutal captivity in Vietnam. “There aren’t democratic casualties or republican casualties on the battlefield,” he said.

His comments follow an interview with the Bulwark, a conservative news website.

“I just want to lay it on the line, that the country deserves better, the McCain family deserves better. I don’t care if he’s president of United States, owns all the real estate in New York, or is building the greatest immigration system in the world,” Isakson told the site.

"Nothing is more important than the integrity of the country and those who fought and risked their lives for all of us.”

Trump unloaded on the legacy of McCain, who died of brain cancer last year, in several tweets this week. On Tuesday, he attacked McCain’s vote against repealing Obamacare.

[‘Husband from hell!’: Trump escalates feud with spouse of Kellyanne Conway]

“I think that’s a disgrace, plus there are other things,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be.”

Meghan McCain, a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” blasted Trump and defended her father on Wednesday.

Her father “would think it was hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death,” she said.

Trump’s attacks have also appeared to unleash trolls targeting the McCain family. Soon after the president’s Oval Office remarks, Cindy McCain posted a profanity-laced message she received on Facebook.

A woman called John McCain “traitorous” and celebrated his death.

“I want to make sure all of you could see how kind and loving a stranger can be,” Cindy McCain wrote on Twitter, referring to the woman.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) rallied to McCain’s defense Wednesday.

I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 19, 2019
“I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God,” Romney wrote on Twitter.

Sen. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican appointed to McCain’s former seat, also defended the former senator.

“Everyone should give him and his family the respect, admiration, and peace they deserve,” she wrote on Twitter. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a Trump ally, praised McCain in a tweet but did not address the president’s attacks against him.

Isakson, chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, is a general supporter of Trump but often extends more criticisms of the president than many Republican lawmakers.

After last year’s controversy over the flag raising, lowering and re-raising, he took to the Senate floor to blast the perceived insult to McCain, although he did not single out the president in his remarks.

“Anybody who in any way tarnishes the reputation of John McCain deserves a whipping because most of those who would do the wrong thing about John McCain didn’t have the guts to do the right thing when it was their turn,” he said.

The focus has since narrowed to Trump. Isakson watched Trump’s Tuesday remarks and their impact.

“These kids are out there listening to the president of the United States talk that way about the most decorated senator in history who is dead, it just sets the worst tone possible,” he told the Bulwark.

Angela Fritz contributed to this story.

[lennygoran]

Trump attacks McCain again, saying he didn’t get a ‘thank you’ for approving late senator’s funeral

When will those spineless Republicans speak out! Regards, Len

[jserraglio]

Diminished responsibility? If in fact the Mussolini of Midtown is, as George Conway suggested the other day, loco, nuts, a wack-job. Meantime, in Lima, Ohio, he again behaved improperly as Commander-in-Chief by rallying veterans of the military to his political cause.

WAPO
Even in death, McCain remains a Trump target. Republicans are begging him to stop.

President Trump on Wednesday escalated his unrelenting attacks on the late senator from Arizona and former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who even in death has remained one of Trump’s top targets for abuse as fellow Republicans have repeatedly begged him to stop.
In a five-minute diatribe during an appearance at a General Dynamics tank factory in Lima, Ohio, Trump argued that McCain, a lifelong Pentagon booster and former prisoner of war in Vietnam, “didn’t get the job done” for veterans while also grousing that he did not receive proper gratitude for McCain’s funeral last September.
“I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve,” Trump said inaccurately, an apparent reference to allowing the use of military transport to carry McCain’s body to Washington. “I don’t care about this, I didn’t get a thank-you, that’s okay. We sent him on the way. But I wasn’t a fan of John McCain.”
He added, “I have to be honest, I never liked him much. Hasn’t been for me. I’ve really, probably, never will.”
The full-throated repudiation of a deceased and revered member of his party was remarkable even for a president constantly at war with his rivals, and it came amid an outpouring of statements in recent days praising McCain in the face of Trump’s attacks.
“It’s deplorable what he said,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in an interview with Atlanta-based Georgia Public Broadcasting earlier Wednesday, referring to previous Trump attacks on McCain. “It will be deplorable seven months from now, if he says it again, and I will continue to speak out. . . . We should never reduce the service that people give to this country, including the offering of their own life.”
Trump’s comments are part of a longtime pattern in which he lashes into those he sees as challenging him — whether prominent or obscure, alive or dead.
In recent days, the president has also attacked George Conway, the husband of senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway, calling him a “stone cold loser,” “a whack job” and a “husband from hell” after Conway raised questions about the president’s mental health on Twitter. Others who have drawn the president’s ire in recent days have included weekend Fox News hosts and “Saturday Night Live” writers and performers.
Some close to the president have attributed his frustrations to worrying over the looming report on Russian election interference from the special counsel’s office — which he mocked Wednesday on the South Lawn of the White House en route to Ohio — while others said he simply has fewer advisers to restrain him from airing his grievances.
Animosity between Trump, who received draft deferments from military service, and McCain stretches back decades and came to a head during the 2016 campaign when Trump declared that McCain was “not a war hero” because he had been captured after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam.
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Aides say the new round of frustrations over McCain was fueled by a news report Trump saw recently about McCain’s role in handing over a copy of an intelligence dossier to the FBI after the 2016 election. Trump inaccurately blames the disputed document for kicking off the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the campaign to help Trump.
Trump has regularly railed about McCain in the nearly seven months since his death, complaining about the dossier and the senator’s vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. Exasperated advisers have encouraged him repeatedly to drop the issue, but his grudge against McCain is particularly visceral, according to current and former aides.
Some of McCain’s supporters said the criticism would amuse McCain, who would have appreciated that the president was still tormented by his legacy. Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime friend and co-author, said that at first he was angered by the president’s mischaracterizations.
“It’s reaching a point of boredom for all of us. McCain is getting some kind of amusement out of it that he’s still in the guy’s head somewhere,” Salter said. “It doesn’t help him, but he can’t control himself. He obviously resents John. He obviously craves the admiration that John received in life. He may excoriate the establishment and fake news and everything else, but he craves its approval.”
At Trump’s event in Lima, Fred Creech, a 61-year-old welder from Wapakoneta, Ohio, said he was a Trump supporter who appreciated the president’s visit but said he was not thrilled by the extended anti-McCain diatribe.
“I can understand what he was saying, but I don’t know that it was totally necessary to explain all that to every single person out here,” Creech said.
Mike Phillips, 58, of Lafayette, Ohio, who works as a forklift driver at the plant, said he was a Trump supporter who appreciated the president’s political incorrectness. “We’ve got a president up there right now that has backbone,” he said. “And we’re sorry if we hurt a few feelings, if that’s the way it is, but we’ve got to be strong again.”
But Phillips was not eager to wade into the McCain controversy: “I do not have a comment on his comment. I’m not going there.”
Republicans have privately urged Trump to be more decorous about their late colleague, but most have done little in response to the continued attacks, aside from veiled criticisms. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) posted a tweet before Trump’s Ohio speech that praised McCain but did not mention the president.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who was close to McCain and remains close to Trump, said at an event in South Carolina on Monday that he had repeatedly counseled the president against attacking his late friend, to no avail.
“He’s an American hero, and nothing will ever change that in my eyes. I want to help this president, I want him to be successful,” he said. “ . . . I think the president’s comments about Senator McCain hurt him more than they hurt the legacy of Senator McCain.”
A number of Democratic presidential candidates on Wednesday sharply criticized Trump’s attacks on McCain, including South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who said Trump “faked a disability in order to avoid serving,” a reference to the president’s disputed medical deferment for bone spurs.
Beto O’Rourke, appearing at a campaign stop in Conway, N.H., pointed to McCain’s disavowal of racial attacks in the 2008 presidential race against Barack Obama.
“I think that kind of dignity and civility and mutual respect in our politics is missing right now,” O’Rourke said. “I hope that we go back to his example. Instead of focusing on the president’s comments I want to focus on Senator McCain and his example.”
The president is unlikely to change his posture toward McCain, aides say. He takes particular pride in the idea that GOP voters prefer him over McCain, and aides say he has bragged that Republicans might cringe but not punish him over the attacks.
On the day of McCain’s death, he scuttled issuing a statement drafted by White House aides honoring his life. He reluctantly lowered the U.S. flags over the White House briefly before they were raised — then under a fierce backlash, lowered them again.
The president also fumed about the wall-to-wall news coverage of McCain’s death and that he was not invited to the funeral at Washington National Cathedral, current and former administration officials said.
Trump said in Lima that he did not like McCain because he received a “fake and phony” dossier and handed it over to the FBI, “hoping to put me in jeopardy.” McCain had said he handed over the document after it was provided to him on the sidelines of a security conference because he thought it was important for law enforcement to investigate.
The president said, without providing examples or evidence, that McCain “didn’t get the job done for our great vets at the VA and they knew it.”
And he attacked McCain’s status as a longtime defense hawk who advocated a robust U.S. presence in the Middle East and Afghanistan. “We’re in a war in the Middle East that McCain pushed so hard,” Trump said.
After about five minutes of complaining about McCain, Trump seemed to realize he had flown to Ohio for another reason. Explaining his jeremiad, he said the news media had asked him about McCain — but only after he tweeted attacks on the late senator.
“Not my kind of guy, but some people like him and I think that’s great,” he said. “Now, let’s get back and get onto the subject of tanks and this economy.”
Josh Dawsey is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017. He previously covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.
Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at the New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things.
Felicia Sonmez is a national political reporter covering breaking news from the White House, Congress and the campaign trail. She was previously based in Beijing, where she worked for Agence France-Presse and The Wall Street Journal.
Alex Horton is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. He previously covered the military and national security for Stars and Stripes, and served in Iraq as an Army infantryman.
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[lennygoran]

Even in death, McCain remains a Trump target. Republicans are begging him to stop.

Remember when Graham lashed out during the Cavanaugh hearings-that's what that hypocritical coward had to do after Trump's tirade yesterday. Regards, Len

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/201 ... am-vpx.cnn

[jserraglio]

Surely MagaMan hated McCain, but disparaging McCain posthumously is also this Midtown Mussolini's latest way of chumming the waters to draw the sharks off from the fresh wounds inflicted by Cohen and the SDNY probe, among others.

[lennygoran]

this Midtown Mussolini's latest way of chumming the waters to draw the sharks off from the fresh wounds inflicted by Cohen and the SDNY probe, among others.

Today he's got new problems-Kushner and Ivanka with their private emails! Regards, Len

[jserraglio]

. . . he's got new problems

And so may we, so do we.

I'm concerned that Brobdingnag Benito has recently been toying with the notion of civil strife (maybe even outright civil war) if he is either impeached or defeated in 2020.

My evidence is a not-much-noticed remark (possibly buried under last weekend's Twitter avalanche) in an interview with Breitbart News.

I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.

Here the Commander-in-Chief openly asserts he has the military behind him and that things will get very bad if he is attacked: I regard that remark as a megalomaniac's flirtation with felonious sedition against the United States of America.

[lennygoran]

My evidence is a not-much-noticed remark (possibly buried under last weekend's Twitter avalanche) in an interview with Breitbart News.

I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.

Here the Commander-in-Chief openly asserts he has the military behind him and that things will get very bad if he is attacked: I regard that remark as a megalomaniac's flirtation with felonious sedition against the United States of America.

Yes I noticed that too-I'm also worried about what Trump and his people will say when they see the Mueller report ahead of any one else-no matter what's in it he'll claim he's been vindicated from the witchhunt. Would I love to see a few indictments that are unsealed get unsealed and name some of his conspirators! Regards, Len

[Rach3]

No flirtation with sedition , when coming from any President IS sedition.Trump is nuts,as bad as Hitler, surrounded by the Quisling/Vichy GOP.

[jserraglio]

Trump is nuts, as bad as Hitler.

The die is cast. Mueller's report now rests in the hands of the AGOTUS. Meantime, the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Armed Forces warned this morning that if that report does not exonerate him, the people will not stand for it. That is the third implicit threat of the week uttered by MagaMan.

[lennygoran]

Mueller's report now rests in the hands of the AGOTUS. .

He promised something this weekend-I'll be waiting-maybe no collusion but definitely conspiracy and obstruction! Regards, Len

[jserraglio]

What's past is prologue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv-BaDbGHuE

[Chalkperson]

you are printing his lies, washington cathedral does not need to have presidential approval for a funeral, the deal with the family.

[jserraglio]

you are printing his lies

sunlite disinfectant. 2016 primaries, cnn b'csts djt rallys fronttobak.

[lennygoran]

you are printing his lies

sunlite disinfectant. 2016 primaries, cnn b'csts djt rallies cmplt.
[/quote]

I don't understand-was Chalkie saying what CNN and other places have said about not needing permission from the cathredral were lies-I don't think they're lies. Am I missing something? Regards, Len [waiting around for that summary coming this afternoon]

[jserraglio]

Of course, WAPO & NYT print his lies, just as CNN broadcast his lies unedited during the last round of presidential primaries and put them on everybody's radar. The man is, sad to say, still the POTUS, so attention must be paid, even if tweets have replaced white papers.

[lennygoran]

My point was that, of course, WAPO & NYT print his lies, just as CNN broadcast his unedited lies during the last round of presidential primaries and put them on everybody's radar. The man is, sad to say, still the POTUS, so attention must be paid, even if a tweet amounts to all of what we know that he knows.

So you think Chalkie was saying that quoting Trump's lies by you is not the right thing to do-I of course disagree with him on that-I want to know what that monster is feeding his base-I want to hear the lies he's spouting. I sit there watching his rants constantly-otoh my wife runs out of the room! Regards, Len