• RINO "Five Plane" McCain Insists 'Bone Spur' Remark Wasn't About Tr

    From PaxPerPoten@21:1/5 to Leroy N. Soetoro on Tue Oct 24 22:06:01 2017
    XPost: sci.military.naval, alt.vietnam.veterans, alt.war.vietnam

    On 10/24/2017 12:03 PM, Leroy N. Soetoro wrote:
    Senator John McCain on Sunday condemned the ways in which wealthier
    Americans avoided serving in the Vietnam War, but insisted on Monday that
    he was not talking about President Trump when he did so.

    Speaking on C-Span on Sunday, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, used bone spurs as an example of the kind of condition that allowed some to avoid
    being drafted during the conflict. Mr. Trump was exempted from military service after receiving a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels.

    “One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never, ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest-income level of America and the highest-income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur,” Mr. McCain said. “That is wrong.”

    Mr. McCain did not mention Mr. Trump directly in the interview. But his choice to use bone spurs as an example, when Americans received exemptions for manifold other conditions, was widely perceived as a jab at the president.

    On Monday, Mr. McCain appeared on “The View,” where his daughter, Meghan, is a host, and repeated his comments. He said that while he did not
    consider Mr. Trump a draft dodger, the system had been so broken that “certain Americans could evade their responsibilities.”

    He did not deny that he had been talking about Mr. Trump, and was critical
    of the president for his past comments about prisoners of war.

    But later, Mr. McCain insisted to reporters that he had not been talking about Mr. Trump, The Daily Beast reported.

    “I was against that 40 years ago,” Mr. McCain said. “So for you people to
    say that I’m taking a shot at Trump over that, then you don’t know my record. It is unfair and unequal. The rich people didn’t serve and poor people did. It has nothing to do with President Trump.”

    In an interview with The Times in 2016, Mr. Trump recalled the spurs as “temporary” and “minor,” saying that they had not meaningfully affected
    him.

    “I had a doctor that gave me a letter — a very strong letter on the heels,” he said then.

    The senator’s comments on Sunday to C-Span followed a week of difficult questions for the White House over Mr. Trump’s attitude toward military service, after a call from the president to the widow of a slain soldier ignited a firestorm. The controversy threatened to overshadow the president’s agenda for a second week after the soldier’s widow spoke out publicly on Monday morning.

    Mr. McCain tends to vote in line with Mr. Trump’s positions. But his remarks were a reminder of the simmering conflict between an unorthodox president and a senator who was shot down during the Vietnam War and subjected to abuse and torture for more than five years as a prisoner in Hanoi.

    Mr. Trump, 71, and Mr. McCain, 81, have clashed frequently over the past several years. In July 2015, after the two exchanged barbs during the Republican primary contests, Mr. Trump said the senator was not a war
    hero, adding that he likes “people who weren’t captured.”

    In July, Mr. McCain cast a deciding vote against a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a measure that Mr. Trump had vocally supported. Mr. Trump, in turn, repeatedly attacked Mr. McCain on Twitter and at his
    rallies.

    Mr. McCain’s vote on health care came in the same month that the senator’s
    office announced that he had brain cancer.

    In response to the diagnosis, the president recognized an essential
    quality in a fellow Republican who has repeatedly spoken out against him. “Senator John McCain has always been a fighter,” Mr. Trump said then.

    It is such a shame that all of our Prisoners of war in the Hanoi Hilton
    were not exactly like John(Songbird) McCain. The North Vietnamese would
    have negotiated or surrendered just to force us to take those people
    back! You can bet they wouldn't be taking any more of that kind of prisoner.




    --
    It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard
    the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all
    ages who mean to govern well, but *They mean to govern*. They promise to
    be good masters, *but they mean to be masters*. Daniel Webster

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