WASHINGTON — The fallout from Donald Trump’s recent comments have reached a fever pitch, with at least one veteran saying the presidential candidate’s remarks don’t make him fit to be commander in chief.
“It demonstrates such a lack of conduct, [it shows] such a knee-jerk ability to say things, that if you think of this in the foreign policy realm, it’s a little bit reckless,” says Ward Carroll, a 20-year veteran and editor of We Are the Mighty, a military news website.
During a Republican presidential forum on Saturday, Trump said Sen. John McCain was “not a war hero … he’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain was a naval aviator who was shot down during the Vietnam War and held prisoner for more than five years in Hanoi.
On Monday, McCain told MSNBC that Trump doesn’t need to apologize to him, but he should apologize to veterans and their families. “I am not a hero … I’m in the arena,” McCain said Monday.
Appearing in a nationally broadcast interview, the Arizona Republican said, “When Mr. Trump says he prefers to be with people who are not captured, the great honor of my life was to be in the company of heroes.”
Carroll says he’s “surprised that [Trump] is still in the arena.” He also said fellow veterans have condemned Trump’s comments.
“I am always amazed when he doubles down and keeps going,” Carroll says. “So maybe that’s what America is looking for, somebody who doesn’t flinch, and I guess that’s its own statement.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
