JOHN MCCAIN IS MORE OF A MAN DEAD THAN DONALD TRUMP IS ALIVE

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     Who in their right mind would badmouth a dead man who gave so much to his country?  Nobody. But Donald Trump is not in his right mind.  His abusive comments between Saturday, March 16th and Wednesday, March 20th, 2019 about the late Senator John McCain is beyond disgraceful.

     Trump is worse than the bully on the playground who picks on and beats up the smallest, weakest child in the school. But Senator McCain was far from weak.  At least that innocent youngster, who is being tormented, can try to fight back. And...he has parents, teachers, and perhaps some friends to hopefully rescue him. John McCain - and others who Trump has been uncivil to - will get their respective families, plus columnists such as myself, other journalists, maybe a smattering of politicians, and some people on social media to defend those who have been harmed by the wrath of Trump, but it doesn't matter to him because Trump doesn't care.  He figures - since he's the president - he can say and do whatever he wants and that he can get away with it. And if anyone does chastise him for his heinous behavior, Trump pushes back with more hate.

     Donald Trump is pure evil.  He blatantly and flagrantly attacked Senator McCain, over a period of five days, in tweets, at a press conference, and during a speech to an audience that included military veterans.  But the deceased Arizona Republican has been dead for nearly seven months.  He is no longer on this planet...and therefore...he is unable to protect himself from the malice of Donald Trump...or to fight back.  So for Trump to viciously criticize and disparage a departed, but forever distinguished Member of Congress because of a "thumbs-down" gesture when the U.S. Senate voted on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act...that's downright detestable.  Thankfully, it was Senator McCain's vote that saved "Obamacare."  But Trump is also bitterly angry at McCain for something that he didn't do when the facts are clear that he did not do it. Trump is pissed-off - to say the least - because of the role McCain played in forwarding the Trump-Russia Dossier to the F.B.I.  Trump, however, is without question wrong when he accuses McCain of giving the document to then-F.B.I. Director James Comey before the 2016 election.  It was late November - long after the election - when McCain provided the dossier to Comey.  

     In case you're a little fuzzy on the details of the dossier, please allow me to explain.  Also known as the Steele Dossier, it's a compilation of memos that were written by former British spy Christopher Steele.  The dossier alleges misconduct and conspiracy between the 2016 Trump campaign and The Kremlin, and that the Trump campaign allegedly colluded with Russian agents to interfere in the election to help Republican Trump win over Democrat Hillary Clinton.  The dossier also alleges that Russia was out to destroy Mrs. Clinton's candidacy, and that Russia allegedly shared damaging information about the former Secretary of State with the Trump campaign. Solving the mystery of whether Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin cooked up a conspiracy so that Trump would defeat Secretary Clinton is part of what Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating for nearly two years. 

     I never voted for John McCain.  I didn't agree with most of his political views.  After all...I'm a Democrat.  More than that, I'm an ultra-progressive, liberal Democrat.  And regular readers of The Controversy are well aware of that fact. But first and foremost...I'm an American.  U.S. Navy Commander (a Captain when he retired) John Sidney McCain III served our country...my country...with dignity and with honor.  He is a true American hero.  I will identify Senator McCain as a hero multiple times in this column because it's worth mentioning more than once.

     At a Tuesday, March 19th press conference at The White House, Donald Trump did not mince words.  "I was never a fan of John McCain's, and I never will be." Lashing out at McCain is nothing new for Trump.  It was July 18th, 2015 when Trump crossed the line that should have doomed his candidacy. He despicably belittled and obscenely disrespected Senator McCain.  From October 1967 to March 1973, Lieutenant Commander McCain spent about five-and-a-half years as a Vietnam Prisoner Of War.  Most of that time he was incarcerated at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton."  McCain suffered through two of those years in solitary confinement, and while he was a P.O.W., McCain was repeatedly tortured.  So I was sure that Donald Trump's run for The White House would be done and over with after he appeared at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, where he was booed for the atrocious comments he uttered about McCain...a decorated war hero.  "He's not a war hero.  He was a war hero because he was captured.  I like people who weren't captured."  To this day, I am stunned that Trump's vulgar verbiage did not kill his campaign.  Instead, it grew bigger and flourished without Trump ever apologizing to Senator McCain.  Donald Trump is nothing more than a yellow-bellied coward.  How can any American who voted for Trump claim to be patriotic after Trump's vile language about an armed forces veteran who gave twenty-three years of his life to military service?  How can any military veteran support Trump?  I will never understand how anyone at all voted for Trump or how they continue to have his back.

     In my column of May 17th, 2018, titled...JOHN SIDNEY MCCAIN III: A UNITED STATES SENATOR AND AN AMERICAN HERO WHO "DESERVES BETTER...SO MUCH BETTER"...I wrote, "Backbones and civility are not part of the structure of Donald Trump."  McCain was dying from glioblastoma, a rare form of brain cancer, when then-senior White House aide Kelly Sadler made a heartless and callous comment in response to McCain's opposition to Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel as C.I.A. director.  "It doesn't matter, he's dying anyway."  But Sadler's cruelty was not admonished by Trump, which painted one more ugly portrait of The White House with Trump as its temporary resident.

     After Trump's wicked words three-and-a-half years ago when he degraded John McCain's military service, I was appalled.  But Trump's supporters couldn't care less. They continued to cheer for him and lift him on to a pedestal.  And when Trump went on and on taunting one person after another, his insults became a matter of accepted practice by the vast majority of Republican voters - including those on Capitol Hill - who brushed them off as insignificant.  And that's the crux of the problem.  Nobody has had the balls to punish Trump.  Republicans in Congress - or at least enough of them - have never shown their outrage towards Trump, thus he has never been censured for his actions.

     Being offensive is not part of the character that I want in my president. But Republicans and some Independents apparently don't give a damn.  Remember these contemptible examples?  Trump insulted a Gold Star mother and father whose soldier son was killed in Iraq while performing a valorous act of heroism to save the lives of troops in his command. Trump defamed a federal judge and his Latino heritage.  Trump mocked a disabled reporter, and his repugnant remarks have ruthlessly mistreated women, Mexicans, other Latinos, Muslims, African-Americans, Jews, the LGBTQ community, and many others.  So I suppose nobody should be shocked - or even mildly surprised - by Donald Trump's latest crude comments.

     Donald Trump has blown a gasket.  He spent the weekend of March 16th and 17th freaking out in a Twitter storm. Republicans in Congress, in the Trump administration Cabinet, and nationwide need to realize what I have been writing about since Trump announced his candidacy on June 16th, 2015...and that is that Donald Trump is mentally unstable, morally unfit, and dangerously reckless...so therefore, he should not be sitting behind The Oval Office desk.  It is long overdue for the vice president and the Cabinet to invoke The 25th Amendment, or for the House of Representatives to impeach Trump and for the Senate to convict and remove him from office.  I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but one does not need any sort of medical degree or doctorate to identify that Trump is off his rocker.  A 10-year old child can probably recognize that Trump is unbalanced, and that his state of mind is not normal.  As part of a 50-tweet tirade, Trump conveyed that he wants the F.C.C. to investigate Saturday Night Live for their unfavorable humor towards him.  Has he forgotten about The First Amendment or has he just lost his funny bone?  There was a time when Donald Trump the television personality appeared on SNL.  By the way, the March 16th episode that riled Trump was actually a repeat episode from December 15th, 2018. To bash Senator John McCain, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, an NBC sketch comedy show, and much more, all over a 48-hour period...is not sane.

     John McCain died on August 25th, 2018...four days before his 82nd birthday.  But even after death, Donald Trump continues to malign him.  On March 20th, during a speech at an Army tank plant in Lima, Ohio, Trump's narcissism was present and he also played the part of the victim, as he once again - with tremendous hostility - blasted McCain.  "I never liked him much.  I really, probably never will."  But then Trump's ego took over. "I gave him the funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve.  I don't care about this.  I didn't get a thank you.  That's okay."  You didn't get a "thank you?"  Seriously?  Really?  Let us remember that Trump didn't want to pay tribute to McCain by lowering the American flags at The White House to half staff.  It took pressure from veterans groups and protests by citizens across the country - Republicans and Democrats - before Trump gave the green light for a well-deserved salute of honor to U.S. Senator and United States Navy Captain John McCain.

     To those individuals - in public and private life - who hammer away at a great many Americans, including me, who speak out against Donald Trump because they desire civility in our country, I say this.  I long for the day when being civil towards the president of the United States is an easy, everyday pleasure.  But for now, if we let Trump mouth off - in person or on Twitter - without retaliating, his dream of being America's dictator would come true.  Every time Trump spews venom off that toxic tongue of his, makes it impossible for others to not react.

     During his Lima, Ohio rant - with Army tanks behind him - Trump wrongly reprimanded John McCain as he assaulted his legacy with a diatribe against the Vietnam War hero.  "McCain didn't get the job done for our great vets at the VA, and they knew it."  Republicans and Democrats alike - despite political differences - respect and revere Senator McCain's service to the United States.  It is an abomination that Donald Trump continues to verbally bludgeon the memory of a beloved American who - even while being treated for terminal cancer - stood tall for our country...for his country.  

     Occupy Democrats spelled it out perfectly.  "John McCain is more of a man dead...than Trump is alive."

     And that's The Controversy for today.

     I'm Gary B. Duglin.

     "We'll talk again."  

The Controversy is a publication of GBD Productions.  Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Controversy is Gary B. Duglin.

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Photo credits: ABC News (Former Senator John McCain #1), Reuters/David Becker (Donald Trump #1), CNN Screenshot (Former Senator John McCain on the U.S. Senate Floor), Press Association and The Associated Press (Christopher Steele), Bettmann Archive (Former Senator John McCain #2), Handout/Getty Images (Former Senator John McCain/Prisoner Of War), Leah Mills/Reuters (Kelly Sadler), ABC News Screenshot (Donald Trump #2), Will Heath/NBC/Broadway Video (Saturday Night Live), YouTube Screenshot (Donald Trump #3) and Ross D. Franklin/The Associated Press/Rex/Shutters (Former Senator John McCain #3)

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