Sen. John McCain: Trump Owes Vets, Not Him, An Apology

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” if Trump should apologize personally to him, McCain said: “I don’t think so”.

McCain also declined to attack Trump for avoiding service in the Vietnam War through a series of deferments. “I like people that weren’t captured”, says Trump flippantly, as the audience reacts negatively.

Trump thinks McCain owes his supporters an apology for comments the Arizona senator made earlier this month at a rally in Phoenix that drew anti-immigration activists and sparked the feud between the two.

The real estate mogul has refused to apologize for the remarks, despite criticism from his own party, including calls from other candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination for him to drop out of the race.

The Republican presidential candidate said his remarks were misrepresented and Mr McCain is a “very courageous man”.

“For someone who never served a day in uniform to criticize the service and sacrifice of a combat-wounded veteran is despicable”, he said, according to the Washington Post.

“It’s just totally inappropriate for Mr Trump to say that he doesn’t like to be with people who are captured“. Trump said he did not need “to be lectured by any of them”. And a spokesman for the Republican National Committee said, “Senator McCain is an American hero because he served his country and sacrificed more than most can imagine”.

Pennsylvania GOP chairman Rob Gleason doesn’t mind the fuss kicked up by Trump. I hate to tell you. “I went from a darling to somebody that they’re not happy with because I’m not a politician”.

For his part, Trump has shown little public remorse. “And I do think it is a disqualifier as commander in chief”.

“A nation without borders is not a nation at all but John McCain has not been able to figure that out”, Trump said.

Trump has made other eyebrow-raising comments since declaring his candidacy, most notably his assertion that Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers.

McCain, a Navy fighter pilot, was imprisoned and tortured in a Hanoi prison for five years during the Vietnam War after being shot down. “But we don’t talk about people who weren’t captured, and that’s what I was trying to refer to”.

“He’s my friend, and anybody who would suggest he’s not a hero, they have nothing but my – I can’t say on camera what I really feel about it”, Carper said Monday.