Donald Trump’s dismissive comments about Senator John McCain’s military service in the Vietnam War were “shameful,” former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Saturday, joining most of her would-be Republican presidential rivals in defending the former prisoner of war.
Hours after the real estate mogul set off an uproar in the Republican Party with his suggestion that McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was “not a war hero,” Clinton lambasted Trump in a speech at the Arkansas Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner.
Clinton, who served in the Senate with McCain, broadened her critique of Trump beyond his comments about the Arizona senator to include Trump’s incendiary remarks about immigration — which set off his feud with McCain.
“There is nothing funny about” how Trump has talked about immigrants or “the insults he’s directed at a genuine war hero, Senator John McCain,” Clinton told her audience in North Little Rock. “It’s shameful.”
Noting the deference many Republicans have accorded the outspoken billionaire, whose take-no-prisoners speaking style has rocketed him towards the top of his party’s presidential field, Clinton questioned why it “took so long for most of his fellow Republican candidates to stand up to him.”
Some Republicans, including McCain, have publicly disagreed with Trump’s comments on immigration, including a charge that Mexicans illegally crossing the border are “rapists.” However, it was not until Trump attacked McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, that condemnation became more vocal and widespread.
Almost every major Republican candidate running for president, with the notable exception of Senator Ted Cruz, rounded on Trump on Saturday after he pooh-poohed McCain’s time in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where the US Navy pilot was tortured to the point where he says he considered suicide.
In her visit to North Little Rock, which brought her back to the state where she was once first lady, Clinton also commented on Thursday’s shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A Marine from Arkansas was among the five people killed by a gunman who opened fire at two military facilities there.
The incident “breaks our hearts but it also stiffens our resolve,” she said. “We will not be intimidated by terrorists. We’ll be strong, we’ll be smart and we’ll defend our country and our values.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
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JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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