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.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
RSS