Donald Trump has been slammed for mocking John McCain’s arm injury which he sustained while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
The late senator’s daughter, Meghan McCain, hit back by branding penultimate president a ‘piece of s***, election denying huckster’ on X.
Trump’s comment about the longtime Arizona statesman came during a speech in Iowa where he also blasted Barack Obama, who was in the White House until the year before McCain died in 2018.
Donald Trump has been slammed for mocking John McCain’s arm injury which he sustained while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam during a rally in Iowa (pictured)
The late senator’s daughter, Meghan McCain , hit back by branding penultimate president a ‘piece of s***, election denying huckster’ on X. (Pictured: John and Meghan McCain in 2017)
McCain served as an Arizona senator from 1987 until his death. He was also the Republican nominee in the 2008 election against Obama
‘Obamacare is a catastrophe, nobody talks about it. Without John McCain we would have had it done,’ Trump said from a lectern during a campaign event in Newton.
‘But John McCain couldn’t get his arm up, I remember,’ he added, shrugging his own arm in a mocking motion.
McCain, a former US Navy officer who died in 2018, was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for six years until 1973.
He was badly injured in a plane crash and tortured by captors who left him with lifelong ailments, including being unable to raise his arms above his head.
Meghan McCain, 39, said her father was ‘an American hero’ as she hit back at Trump on X on Saturday – which was also the two-year anniversary of the Capitol riot.
‘My dad was an American hero. An icon. A patriot that will be remembered throughout history,’ she wrote.
‘I cannot buy a bagel without someone approaching me about how much they loved and miss him.
‘Trump is a piece of s***, election denying, huckster whose own wife won’t campaign with him.’
‘McCain = American Hero Trump = American Zero,’ one person responded.
McCain served as an Arizona senator from 1987 until his death aged 81. He was also the Republican nominee in the 2008 election against Obama, and became a strong critic of Trump.
His five and a half years in Vietnamese prison began in October 1967 after his Skyhawk dive-bomber was shot down over Hanoi’s Truc Bach lake.
McCain was dragged out of lake and thrown in the Hoa Lo prison – the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ – where he said he and others were tortured. Vietnam says the American prisoners were treated well.
As a high-profile prisoner of war there, McCain was known as uncompromising, frank and an avid reader who fiercely debated the war with his Vietnamese jailers.
Late Senator John McCain In A Hanoi Hospital During The Vietnam War November, 1967
McCain recovering in a Hanoi Hospital from injuries he sustained when he was shot down over Hanoi
At a pre-dinner reception, US President Richard Nixon (1913 – 1994) shakes hands greets former North Vietnamese prisoner of war Captain John McCain, Washington DC, May 24, 1973
One of them, the former director of the infamous prison, recalls verbally sparring with the famous inmate and says McCain’s refusal to budge on his views eventually earned his admiration.
‘It was his stubbornness, his strong stance that I loved when arguing with him,’ retired colonel Tran Trong Duyet told AFP.
McCain had been fished out of the lake with a broken leg and two broken arms and was shipped to the cold, crowded facility where some 500 prisoners of war were held.
His captors quickly learned McCain’s father was a navy admiral, and the young prisoner soon developed the nickname ‘Crown Prince’.
McCain was held in solitary confinement and suffered from dysentery. For months on end, he was fed only bread and pumpkin soup. He communicated with fellow inmates by tapping codes on the thick concrete walls.
By the end of his long years in prison, Duyet said his relationship McCain started to warm.
‘Out of working hours, we considered each other friends,’ he said. ‘He taught me English… he had good teaching skills.’
Trump said during the campaign for the presidency that McCain was ‘not a war hero’ because he was captured in Vietnam.
The controversial comments inflamed his throngs of supporters, many of whom saw his time as a POW as a defining experience.
‘John McCain will always be America’s prisoner of war, that experience is now inseparable from the name John McCain and the person that has been John McCain,’ said Alvin Townley, author of ‘Defiant’ about American POWs held in Hoa Lo.
McCain smiling from a bus window on arrival at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, after his release from Hanoi during the Vietnam War, 14th March 197
Meghan McCain, 39, said her father was ‘an American hero’ as she hit back at Trump on X on Saturday – which was also the two-year anniversary of the Capitol riot. (Pictured: McCain with Joe Biden on The View in 2017, when Biden was Vice President)
Trump’s comment came during his latest appearance on the campaign trail this week.
The 77-year-old former president is embroiled in a storm over the January 6 Capitol riot, with new details emerging in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the attack.
Updates include interviews claiming Trump ‘wasn’t interested’ in doing anything to stop his supporters rioting at the Capitol following his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
Much of the new details come from Smith’s questioning of Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, according to ABC News.
But Trump is focused on the 2024 presidential election, which officially kicks off on January 15 when voters in Iowa will register their choice for who should be the Republican Party’s nominee.
Trump is still leading the Republican race by a country mile, with recent polls positing him at 51 percent, ahead of Ron DeSantis on 19 per cent, and Nikki Haley on 16 percent.