This is where President Donald J. Trump found himself over the weekend following the death of 81-year-old Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. An undisputed war hero with a questionable civil rights voting record, McCain lost his battle to brain cancer on Saturday.
Unlike McCain, Trump ran away from serving his country during the Vietnam War faster than a cheetah. He secured five deferments, one of them speciously for bone spurs in his foot. Still, this carnival barker transforming 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. into a planetary malignancy belittled McCain for enduring more than five years, starting in 1967, in the then-North Vietnam as a prisoner of the same war that Trump feared.
As a result, Trump’s empty condolences sent via Twitter were met with the appropriate social media derision and invective he has so roundly merited in accordance with his prior actions. McCain’s family has extended invitations to former presidents George Bush and one-time political foe Barack Obama to eulogize McCain.
In May, one of McCain’s final requests was that the leader of the Deplorable world not attend his last rites.
Some will never forgive McCain for his wrong-headed decision in 1983 to vote against the Martin Luther King Holiday. McCain was on the losing side of that vote. However, like him or not, on the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination in 2008, McCain had the temerity to acknowledge his misstep in a speech in Memphis, Tenn., the city of King’s murder.
“We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I myself made long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King. I was wrong,” McCain said to a cheering crowd. “I was wrong, and eventually realized it in time to give full support – full support – for a state holiday in my home state of Arizona. I’d remind you that we can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans.”
Don’t expect Trump to ever go this route on any of his transgressions.
In response to the horrific grand jury investigation of more than 300 Pennsylvania priests into decades of sexual abuse and church cover-ups, Pope Francis took the unprecedented step of penning a 2,000-word letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics admitting that the Vatican has not dealt (ya’ think?) properly with priest sexual abuses against children.
Trump has remained — not surprisingly — silent here, perhaps on the advice of his lawyers that this is something he needs to steer clear of. Rest assured that this is due less to the amorality of his private life — apparently rife with payoffs to his pornography industry paramours — going public and far more to the possible future legal ramifications that could result from the special council’s investigation being led by Robert Mueller, whose inquiry subjects include Trump.
Outside of Trump’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil base that has signed off on his xenophobia, chauvinism – are they really holding their noses at this point? — and other deplorable personality traits, his lack of personal decency allows him no credibility to lend his voice to what is an enormous tragedy that could alter the Catholic church.
This is who the president is. He has never had the high ground. Not since he immaturely mocked a handicapped reporter’s inability to control his limbs, since projecting his own bigotry onto a Mexican-American judge presiding over the Trump University corruption case, and it continues in his describing of Black women like Maxine Waters as “low IQ” and Omarosa Manigualt Newman as a “lowlife” and a “dog.”
The difference is dogs will attach themselves to anything that shows them affection. However, they can’t tender cash to buy affection — or Stormy Daniels for that matter — the way the president has.
Unlike McCain, Trump ran away from serving his country during the Vietnam War faster than a cheetah. He secured five deferments, one of them speciously for bone spurs in his foot. Still, this carnival barker transforming 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. into a planetary malignancy belittled McCain for enduring more than five years, starting in 1967, in the then-North Vietnam as a prisoner of the same war that Trump feared.
As a result, Trump’s empty condolences sent via Twitter were met with the appropriate social media derision and invective he has so roundly merited in accordance with his prior actions. McCain’s family has extended invitations to former presidents George Bush and one-time political foe Barack Obama to eulogize McCain.
In May, one of McCain’s final requests was that the leader of the Deplorable world not attend his last rites.
Some will never forgive McCain for his wrong-headed decision in 1983 to vote against the Martin Luther King Holiday. McCain was on the losing side of that vote. However, like him or not, on the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination in 2008, McCain had the temerity to acknowledge his misstep in a speech in Memphis, Tenn., the city of King’s murder.
“We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I myself made long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King. I was wrong,” McCain said to a cheering crowd. “I was wrong, and eventually realized it in time to give full support – full support – for a state holiday in my home state of Arizona. I’d remind you that we can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans.”
Don’t expect Trump to ever go this route on any of his transgressions.
In response to the horrific grand jury investigation of more than 300 Pennsylvania priests into decades of sexual abuse and church cover-ups, Pope Francis took the unprecedented step of penning a 2,000-word letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics admitting that the Vatican has not dealt (ya’ think?) properly with priest sexual abuses against children.
Trump has remained — not surprisingly — silent here, perhaps on the advice of his lawyers that this is something he needs to steer clear of. Rest assured that this is due less to the amorality of his private life — apparently rife with payoffs to his pornography industry paramours — going public and far more to the possible future legal ramifications that could result from the special council’s investigation being led by Robert Mueller, whose inquiry subjects include Trump.
Outside of Trump’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil base that has signed off on his xenophobia, chauvinism – are they really holding their noses at this point? — and other deplorable personality traits, his lack of personal decency allows him no credibility to lend his voice to what is an enormous tragedy that could alter the Catholic church.
This is who the president is. He has never had the high ground. Not since he immaturely mocked a handicapped reporter’s inability to control his limbs, since projecting his own bigotry onto a Mexican-American judge presiding over the Trump University corruption case, and it continues in his describing of Black women like Maxine Waters as “low IQ” and Omarosa Manigualt Newman as a “lowlife” and a “dog.”
The difference is dogs will attach themselves to anything that shows them affection. However, they can’t tender cash to buy affection — or Stormy Daniels for that matter — the way the president has.
John N. Mitchell has worked as a journalist for more than a quarter century. He can be reached at jmitchell@phillytrib.com and Tweet at @freejohnmitchel.
https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/columns/john-mitchell-mccain-had-a-grace-that-trump-sorely-lacks/article_3ce4b7be-35c5-5d0e-80b4-180e38b43e99.html
https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/columns/john-mitchell-mccain-had-a-grace-that-trump-sorely-lacks/article_3ce4b7be-35c5-5d0e-80b4-180e38b43e99.html
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