At a conservative forum on July 18, 2015 in Ames, Iowa, Donald Trump looked at a man who spent five and a half years being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison and said he wasn’t really a war hero. Why? Because he got captured.
“He’s a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said. “I like people that weren’t captured.”
John McCain, a Navy pilot shot down over Hanoi, refused early release as a POW because it would have meant leaving his fellow prisoners behind. He came home with both arms permanently damaged. Trump, who received five draft deferments during the same war, decided that didn’t count.
This wasn’t a gaffe. Trump doubled down when challenged. The crowd didn’t walk out. Republican leaders condemned it — and then, eventually, fell in line anyway.
When a major party’s frontrunner can mock a POW’s suffering and pay no lasting political price, something has already broken.
This was a warning, ignored by so many.
Sources: CBS News | AP Fact Check via PBS | Full transcript via Rev