CBS: Trump Refuses to Apologize for McCain Comments
ROSE: “Donald Trump is escalating his fight with Senator John McCain. In a USA Today op-ed, Trump again attacks his fellow Republican. Trump writes, ‘McCain has abandoned our veterans. I will fight for them. A number of my competitors for the Republican nomination have no business running for president. I do not need to be lectured by any of them.’ All of that from Donald Trump.
O’DONNELL: “That’s right. The new attack follows Trump’s controversial remarks about the former Vietnam prisoner of war. Nancy Cordes reports. He said John McCain ‘is not a war hero’. Nancy Cordes is in Washington with how Trump’s rivals are lining up against the billionaire. Nancy, good morning.”
CORDES: “Good morning. Here are some of the terms his opponents used to describe trump's comments, ‘absurd’, ‘ridiculous’, ‘idiotic’, and even the Republican National Committee which has been reluctant to publicly denounce Trump is now suggested there's no place in the party for his kind of talk.”
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TRUMP: “He graduated last in his class at Annapolis.”
CORDES (voice-over): “Trump made his contentious comments about McCain at a conservative forum in Ames, Iowa.”
TRUMP: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured, OK.”
NN REPORTER: “Do you agree with that?”
TRUMP: “He’s a war hero because he was captured.”
CORDES (voice-over): “Reaction from his rivals was swift.”
WALKER: “That’s just a disgrace.”
RUBIO: “It’s not just absurd. It’s offensive, it’s ridiculous.”
PERRY: “Donald Trump owes every American veteran and in particular John McCain an apology.”
CORDES (voice-over): “The head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars weighed in saying, ‘For someone who never served a day in uniform to criticize the service and sacrifice of a combat-wounded veteran is despicable.’ On Sunday in an interview with ABC, he was given a chance to apologize but declined.”
TRUMP: “I said four times I said ‘he is a hero,’ but people choose little selective -- like you try to do – people choose little selective pieces… People that fought hard and weren’t captured and went through a lot, they get no credit. Nobody even talks about them.”
CORDES (voice-over): “McCain was shot down over Vietnam in 1967, during his 23rd bombing mission. His arms were broken, he was tortured and he spent nearly six years as a prisoner of war turning down the chance for early release because others were still being held. In a statement the RNC pointedly warned Trump that there's no place in our party or our country for comments that disparaged those that have served honorably, but Trump says McCain owes him an apology because the Arizona senator said last week that trump had, quote, ‘fired up the crazy,’ at a rally in Phoenix.”
TRUMP: “I know what crazy is. I know all about crazies,these weren't crazy. So he insulted me and he insulted everybody in that room.”
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CORDES: “Several of Trump's rivals argue that his comments disqualify him for higher office but Trump says there's no way he's dropping out of the race, especially because two new national polls just in the past couple of days show him firmly leading the GOP field.”
