These comments have drawn widespread criticisms from the other presidential candidates and the Republican caucus.
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After his plane was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, he spent five years in prison, where he was frequently tortured.
The billionaire and reality TV star said Mr McCain was only considered a hero because he was a prisoner of war. “He’s a war hero because he was captured“.
“I supported McCain for president”, Trump said of McCain’s 2008 White House run.
“Right now, he’s said some very bad things about a lot of people“.
Trump even went on to say he “wasn’t a big fan” of the Vietnam War and had many friends that served and many that also had student deferments.
At a state Democratic fundraising dinner, Hillary Clinton said: “There’s nothing amusing about the hate he [Trump] is spewing at immigrants and their families and now the insults he has directed at a genuine war hero, Senator John McCain”. “Because all you have to do is take a look – what you report on all the time, take a look at the scandal at the Veterans’ Administration and the disastrous conditions under which our veterans have to live”, Trump told Raddatz.
AMES, Iowa (AP) – Donald Trump blustered his way into more trouble as his feud with a Republican Party elder turned decidedly nasty on Saturday, overshadowing fellow presidential candidates promoting their conservative credentials to evangelical Christians.
Trump did not just attack McCain. In an exchange with moderator Frank Luntz, Perry lit into Trump unprompted, calling his comments “as disturbing to me as I’ve heard in this entire process of running for the presidency of the Untied States” and saying that Trump “doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about people who serve this country”.
“Enough with the slanderous attacks”, Jeb Bush tweeted.
“Donald Trump is in first place in the national polls”, Lewandowski said Sunday in a telephone interview from Windham, New Hampshire. Asked on ABC’s “This Week” if he owed McCain an apology, Trump said, “No, not at all”.
“I’ve never liked him as much after that”, Trump added. “I am so proud of the fact that I got a dialogue started on illegal immigration”.
“Sen. Mc Cain, and all American Vietnam POW’s, served honorably and heroically”, Horn said.
“What Mr. Trump is offering is not conservatism, it is Trump-ism – a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense”, the former Texas governor said in a statement.
But Trump’s Saturday statement sparked outrage across the Republican party in a response that stands in contrast to the reactions that followed his portrayal of Mexican immigrants as drug pushers and rapists – although voters on the ground may have a different opinion.
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FILE – In this September 14, 1973, file phot, John McCain is greeted by President Richard Nixon, left, in Washington.
