WASHINGTON – Presidential candidate Donald Trump refused on Sunday to apologize for his remarks about the war record of U.S. Sen. John McCain despite a growing firestorm among fellow Republicans, and said he had no plans to drop out of the race.
Asked on ABC’s “This Week” if he owed McCain an apology for saying the former prisoner in North Vietnam was only considered a war hero because he was captured, Trump said, “No, not at all.” He again blasted McCain’s support for fellow veterans.
“John McCain has failed,” Trump said, citing delays in health care for veterans. “I believe that I will do far more for veterans than John McCain has done for many, many years, with all talk no action … Nothing gets done.”
McCain, a Navy fighter pilot, was imprisoned and tortured in a Hanoi prison for five years during the Vietnam War after being shot down.
Trump drew fire on Saturday for telling an audience in Iowa that McCain was “not a war hero,” and got that distinction only because he was captured, although he later softened his remarks.
Republican commentators said the latest remarks could mark the beginning of the end of his presidential bid.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Trump’s comments were “shameful.
“And so is the fact that it took so long for his fellow Republican candidates to start standing up to him,” Clinton added on Saturday, according to Politico.
Two fellow Republican presidential candidates, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, speaking on different Sunday talk shows, said Trump’s remarks made him unfit to serve as commander in chief.
“This is not just an insult to John McCain, who clearly is a war hero and a great man,” Rubio told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s not just absurd. It’s offensive. It’s ridiculous. And I do think it is a disqualifier as commander in chief.”
Perry told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Republican party needed to reach out to diverse populations, not drive them away, citing Trump’s recent, widely criticized comments about Mexican immigrants.
Trump rejected calls by fellow Republicans that he drop out of the presidential race and said they were simply upset about his lead in recent polls in North Carolina, Nevada and other states.
He predicted he would win the Hispanic vote if he won the Republican presidential nomination.
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U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump addresses the press July 10 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California,surrounded by people whose families were victims of illegal immigrants who shared their stories of loss. A defiant Trump refused to apologize Sunday after he ignited a firestorm by dismissing the military record of Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war. The flamboyant billionaire businessman, reality TV star and presidential contender said McCain — a decorated aviator who was tortured while spending five years in a prison camp — did not deserve hero status for his Vietnam War service. It was just the latest verbal grenade from the outspoken Trump, 69, who identifies as a Republican and has supported Republican candidates in the past. "No, not at all," Trump told ABC's "This Week" program, when asked if he owed McCain an apology. | AFP-JIJI -
In this fall 1967 file photo, John McCain is administered to at a Hanoi hospital as a prisoner of war. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized Sen. John McCain's military record at a conservative forum Saturday, saying the party's 2008 nominee and former prisoner of war was a "war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." McCain spent 20 years in the Navy, a quarter of it in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp after his jet was shot down over Hanoi during a bombing mission Oct. 26, 1967. | AP
