Blog No. 212. John McCain and Donald Trump (aka “President Bone Spurs”)

In the short run, and perhaps longer, the attention of the media and the public will be largely taken up by the Mueller report–what will be disclosed and what will be withheld, what the report says and what it doesn’t say about misconduct by Trump the Campaigner and Trump the President. For many, that confusing and depressing hubbub will eclipse memories of Trump’s recent jousting with a beloved war hero and public servant now seven months in the grave. That is, of course, the peculiar genius of Donald Trump: every outrage, every indecency, every blunder, is quickly succeeded by the next, and who can remember them all?

Nevertheless, Trump’s bizarre feud with John McCain should not be allowed simply to disappear into the enveloping fog of crossed lines and shattered norms. It should be kept in mind because it so well exemplifies Trump’s character and perhaps, per George Conway, his mental state. It may be considered a side dish to the Mueller report. That report, whatever its strengths and weaknesses, is certain to inaugurate an era in which Trump’s fitness to serve as president will be a matter of intense scrutiny, an era that will end only with his impeachment or his defeat in 2020. As that process goes forward, it is worth asking this among other things: What sort of President has kinder words for Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mohammad bin Salman than he does for the memory of John McCain?

Without getting too far into amateur psychology it seems almost inescapable that much of Trump’s animus toward McCain is rooted in envy of the latter’s character and achievements far beyond Trump’s grasp or even his ability to comprehend. In order to appreciate the current controversy, it is necessary to recall some history. One of Trump’s more memorable sallies against McCain came on July 18, 2015 when he said of McCain “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” On its face, that was a peculiarly offensive attempt to denigrate the five-and-a-half years that McCain spent as a prisoner under brutal conditions in Hanoi. More than that, it reflected extraordinary chutzpah coming from the lips of someone who had himself been a draft dodger.

Trump, it must be recalled, received four deferments as a student and then a crucial fifth deferment on medical grounds for “bone spurs.” Trump’s claim of bone spurs is one that has never been supported by x-rays or any other known medical record. The helpful diagnosis was apparently provided as a favor by a podiatrist who occupied a small storefront office in a Queens building owned by Trump’s father. As the New York Times reported in 2018:

The podiatrist, Dr. Larry Rubinstein, died in 2007. But his daughters say their father often told the story of coming to the aid of a young Mr. Trump during the Vietnam War as a favor to his father.“I know it was a favor,” said one daughter, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, 56, who along with her sister, Sharon Kessel, 53, shared the family’s account for the first time publicly when contacted by The New York Times.

In short, it seems that Trump’s medical diagnosis was “spurious” in every sense. Amid the uproar over Trump’s attacks on McCain, Bob Kerrey called on Trump to produce x-rays showing his bone spurs. Kerrey is a former Senator and Governor from Nebraska, and also a hero of the Vietnam War, gravely wounded and a recipient of the Medal of Honor. Kerrey noted that “you don’t grow out of bone spurs” and continued:

While John McCain was flying combat operations in Vietnam, you were, I think, falsifying that you had bone spurs in order not to go to Vietnam,” Kerrey said. “Now, I know lots of people who avoided the draft, but this isn’t what he’s saying. He said ‘I physically couldn’t go.’ Well, Mr. President, get your feet X-rayed and let’s see those bone spurs. I don’t think he has them.

We are, of course, likely to see Trump’s doggedly concealed tax returns far sooner than we will ever see x-rays of his feet.

The comparison between Trump and McCain during the Vietnam War becomes even more odoriferous when one considers how Trump used the time bestowed on him by the mythical bone spurs. Trump explained that he considered dating in New York during the AIDS epidemic to have been his own Vietnam. He spoke of the danger in women’s vaginas that he viewed as “potential landmines” and continued:

You know, if you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam — it’s called the dating game,” Trump said to [Howard] Stern in a 1993 interview. “Dating is like being in Vietnam. You’re the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam.”

Turning now to Trump’s recent outbursts, he focused on two principal grievances a) McCain’s having turned over the Steele Dossier to the FBI, and b) McCain’s vote against a bill to repeal Obamacare. Apart from the fact that neither grievance has merit, what earthly purpose did he think was served by airing them now and cravenly asserting them against a man who could not respond?

Concerning the Steele Dossier, Trump initially claimed in a tweet that McCain “sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election.” Some brave soul on the President’s staff apparently managed to convince his boss that he had it wrong: that McCain did not deliver the dossier to the media and that he did not deliver it to the FBI until late December, AFTER the election. Rather than correcting the record (never in Trump’s playbook), or simply dropping the subject, Trump returned to the attack two days later with a corrected version. In a speech at a tank factory in Lima, Ohio, Trump again complained of McCain having furnishing the dossier to the FBI instead of calling him, and claimed that he did so to put Trump “in jeopardy.” Reporting the matter to the FBI was, of course, exactly the right action to take—just as Donald Trump should have when he received the offer from agents of the Russian government to provide “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

As to McCain’s vote against the Obamacare repeal bill, Trump has seriously distorted the facts. In a March 21 article in National Review, John McCormack discussed Trump’s “increasingly gross and weird feud“ with John McCain. Focusing on Trump’s Obamacare claim, McCormack pointed out that “The skinny-repeal bill that McCain helped kill would not have seriously repealed and replaced Obamacare.” A comprehensive bill to repeal and replace had already failed, and the “skinny-repeal” bill was so dubbed because it repealed (and did not replace) only parts of Obamacare. In any event, one must ask what rational point was there in trying to re-litigate the issue nearly two years later at a tank factory in Lima.

One answer may be that there was no rational point, that it was simply an emotional outlet to release various unspoken anxieties and frustrations. That theory finds some support in Trump’s inclusion of a petty whinge that he wasn’t thanked for approving McCain’s funeral. (An approval, which in fact he had no authority give or withhold; his only role was to approve transportation of McCain’s body in military aircraft.)

On the other hand, an even more depressing possibility is that Trump was acting rationally in ways to satisfy the malevolent appetites of his ever-hungry base. That was the thesis of a Washington Post article, by Robert Costa, “For Trump, attacking McCain is a way to appeal to his political base. According to Costa, much of the Trump base views McCain as a member of the Republican establishment, toward whom their resentment is deeply felt and frequently expressed. As he reported, “By attacking McCain, Trump allies said Thursday, the president is stoking his supporters’ rawest emotions and suspicions about the GOP’s political elite.”

The nature of Trump’s base is possibly the most discouraging single aspect of our current political predicament. Sooner or later, Trump will disappear, through impeachment, resignation, electoral defeat or, heaven help us, retirement in 2025. But what then of the Trump base? Will it disappear also? Perhaps, but one can hardly count on it. It should be obvious that it is necessary to resist not only Trump, but his base. That is not to say it is necessary or wise to term that base, or any of its members, “deplorable,” as Hillary Clinton famously did. We all know Trump supporters who are intelligent, decent and patriotic citizens. On the other hand, on occasions when Trump’s actions or behavior are deplorable, there is no reason to shrink from saying that support of such actions and behavior is also deplorable. This is one of those occasions.