This dumb diatribe might have Trumped them all.
Donald Trump on Saturday said there was nothing heroic about the 5¹/₂ years Sen. John McCain spent in a North Vietnamese POW camp — souring even his staunchest Republican supporters.
“He’s not a war hero,” the billionaire presidential candidate said in Iowa, stunning an audience of Christian conservatives whose cheers dissolved into boos and murmurs. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
McCain, 78, a Navy pilot, was shot down in 1967 over Hanoi. He was tortured in captivity yet refused to be released before his fellow prisoners. He was freed in 1973.
Trump, a 69-year-old billionaire whose father was a real-estate mogul, reportedly received five deferments from military service at the height of the Vietnam War.
He mocked McCain for having graduated near-last in his class at the US Naval Academy and called him a “loser” for failing in the 2008 presidential race.
The “Apprentice” host launched into the rant when asked about his calling McCain a “dummy” last week following the senator’s comments that Trump’s Arizona followers were “crazies.”
“I know all about crazy,” he said at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa. “These weren’t crazies.”
Trump’s remarks were condemned by GOP leaders — and McCain’s daughter.
“Horrified. Disgusted. There are no words,” broadcaster Meghan McCain, 30, tweeted.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, also took a jab at Trump over Twitter.
“The difference between @SenJohnMcCain and @realDonaldTrump: Trump shot himself down,” he tweeted.
“There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, also running for the GOP nomination, tweeted, “America’s POWs deserve much better than to have their service questioned by the offensive rantings of Donald Trump.”
Another candidate, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said Trump was “unfit to be commander in chief.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker refused to attack Trump but called McCain “an American hero.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the presumed GOP front-runner, decried “slanderous attacks” on McCain without mentioning Trump.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said he was “proud to serve alongside” McCain as a senator but refused to slam Trump.
Speaking Saturday, Trump credited God for “giving me a certain brain . . . I was born with a certain intellect that is good for this.”
Trump, who has been blasted for his remarks on “criminal” Mexican immigrants, led the GOP presidential field in a national Fox poll of registered voters Thursday.
