Jul 21, 2015 2 min read

There had been rumblings about billionaire Donald Trump running for president for years, and he’s recently announced his candidacy for the GOP ticket. It’s pretty much gone downhill from there.

The first major blunder was his statement that stereotyped Mexicans as drug lords and rapists. The fallout from that was NBC severing ties with Trump, meaning that the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants will no longer be aired on the network. And, he refused to apologize. Rather, he stood by his statements, going so far as to say “Everything that I said is correct.”

Most recently, he claimed that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is not a hero. During an appearance in Iowa, Trump called out an interviewer who called McCain a war hero. “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

It’s not just what he said, it’s the pompous, condescending tone in which he said it. Trump has never fought in a war, nor has he been enlisted in the military. While he did attend the New York Military Academy, he deferred the draft four times as a college student.

McCain, on the other hand, refused to give the Vietnamese information, despite being beaten, suffering a number of broken bones and nearly starving to death. McCain was a prisoner of war for more than five years.

McCain isn’t even a potential candidate for the 2016 race, so we have no idea why Trump decided to call him out. Even if he was running, there is still no excuse for such a statement. McCain’s response to Trump? No apology needed for him, but, “I think he may owe an apology to the families of those who have sacrificed in conflict and those who have undergone the prison experience in serving our country,” the senator told MSNBC.

If Trump can’t respect those who have fought for our country, those who have suffered physical, emotional and mental torture in the name of the United States of America, we can’t see how he is in any way qualified to become the leader of the free world, the Commander in Chief of the Federal Armed Forces.

Senator McCain is absolutely a hero. Anyone who fights for our country is a hero. That’s a lot more than we can say about Trump.