Trump Belittles McCain’s War Record
AMES, Iowa — Donald J. Trump upended a Republican presidential forum here Saturday with incendiary comments about Senator John McCain’s war record, drawing widespread condemnation.
Mr. Trump and Mr. McCain have been engaged in a contentious exchange during the past week, since the Republican senator from Arizona said Mr. Trump was riling up “crazies” in the party with inflammatory remarks about illegal immigrants from Mexico.
Asked about Mr. McCain during an event on Saturday sponsored by an Iowa Christian conservative group, Mr. Trump said of Mr. McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Mr. McCain, a Navy aviator, was shot down during the Vietnam War and was held prisoner for more than five years in Hanoi, refusing early release.
Mr. Trump, whose caustic language about immigrants had lifted him in early polls, set off an uproar with his criticism of Mr. McCain’s war record, overshadowing the daylong Family Leadership Summit.
Several of Mr. Trump’s Republican opponents immediately denounced his comments, and one said the remarks disqualified him from the presidency.
“His comments have reached a new low in American politics,” said Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, who has sought to elevate himself in the race by confronting Mr. Trump. “His attack on veterans make him unfit to be commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, and he should immediately withdraw from the race for president.”
A senior Republican National Committee official also repudiated Mr. Trump’s remarks.
“Senator McCain is an American hero because he served his country and sacrificed more than most can imagine. Period,” said Sean Spicer, the committee’s chief strategist. “There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably.”
Speaking to reporters after the question-and-answer session, Mr. Trump tried to soften his remarks, saying any American veteran who was a prisoner of war was heroic. He also shifted his comments to assuage veterans, saying Mr. McCain had failed to address their needs.
“I’m with the veterans all the time,” he said. “I consider them heroes.”
Asked about his own military draft status, Mr. Trump, 69, said he had received medical deferments from the Vietnam War because of a bone spur in his foot. Mr. Trump could not recall which foot had been afflicted.
Mr. Trump’s comments about Mr. McCain overshadowed a more introspective, if somewhat awkward, sequence, in which he revealed his thoughts on religion and marriage.
“I’m a religious person,” Mr. Trump told an audience of nearly 3,000 conservative Christian activists. “I pray, I go to church. Do I do things that are wrong? I guess so.”
Mr. Trump also struggled to answer if he had ever sought forgiveness from God, before reluctantly acknowledging that he had not.
“If I do something wrong, I try to do something right,” he said. “I don’t bring God into that picture.”
And Mr. Trump raised eyebrows with language rarely heard before an evangelical audience — saying “damn” and “hell” when discussing education and the economy — while also describing the taking of communion in glib terms.
“When we go in church and I drink the little wine, which is about the only wine I drink, and I eat the little cracker — I guess that’s a form of asking forgiveness,” Mr. Trump said.
