Trump comments on McCain war record spark outrage

AMES, Iowa — Donald Trump's insults of Sen. John McCain at a presidential candidate forum here on Saturday drew sharp and immediate condemnation from across the Republican spectrum — including calls for him to quit the 2016 race.

The swift, nearly unanimous rebuke prompted by Trump's comments questioning McCain's war heroism may suggest a shift in the Republican presidential contest, as rivals seize an opportunity to marginalize a popular but divisive figure who some see as potentially destructive to the party's standing among Latino voters.

The comments that sparked the firestorm came after forum moderator Frank Luntz interrupted a Trump tirade against McCain to note the senator's heroism in the Vietnam War and the more than five years he was held as a prisoner of war.

"He's a war hero because he was captured," Trump replied dismissively. "I like people that weren't captured, OK?"

Trump went on to insult McCain's academic achievements at the U.S. Naval Academy. At a subsequent news conference, he said McCain "has not done enough for the veterans in this country."

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The businessman and reality TV star, who entered the GOP race last month, has dominated media coverage for weeks with controversial comments on immigration and unflinching criticism of other candidates. More recently, he's begun to take the lead in national polls.

But by expanding his bombastic rhetoric to include criticism of a former prisoner of war, Trump may have overplayed his hand, even with Republicans eager for a candidate at odds with the political establishment, said political scientist Kyle Kondik, managing editor of a political newsletter published by the University of Virginia.

"There's a constituency that supports the pretty stridently anti-illegal immigration comments which Trump has made," Kondik said. "But I don't think there's a constituency for comments that come off as anti-military or basically making fun of POWs, which is what Trump did."

Indeed, rival GOP candidates, party officials and others who may have been looking for an opportunity to distance themselves from Trump seized on the comments. Within an hour, at least a half-dozen fellow candidates tweeted to either criticize Trump or defend McCain, and a few did so on the very same stage at Stephens Auditorium later on Saturday.

Cary Gordon, an evangelical pastor from Sioux City, said that he has seen Trump surging in Iowa in recent weeks and that Trump has surprised many grass-roots conservative activists with his accessibility and thoughtfulness at campaign events.

But that momentum is almost certainly lost now, Gordon said.

"Donald Trump probably handed ammunition to his own firing squad today," he said.

Trump's comments came during the Family Leadership Summit, a key forum for candidates seeking to win approval from the state's sizable bloc of socially conservative evangelical voters.

At a news conference following his appearance, Trump did not apologize for his remarks, according to the Associated Press. He did offer this clarification: “If a person is captured, they’re a hero as far as I’m concerned. I don’t like the job John McCain is doing in the Senate because he is not taking care of our veterans.”

Also appearing Saturday were presidential candidates Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham and Scott Walker.

Cruz, a senator from Texas, won numerous standing ovations and some of the loudest cheers of the day with red-meat conservative rhetoric opposing abortion — including calling for criminal investigations into Planned Parenthood — same-sex marriage and Islamic extremism.

"Cruz has stood up and taken stands against what we call the mainstream political machine," said Jeanne Shattuck, an attendee from Dallas Center.

Jindal, the Louisiana governor, competed with Cruz on crowd response, hitting big applause lines when criticizing the media for failing to adequately scrutinize President Obama and calling for federal employees to be jailed for malfeasance.

Similarly, Graham, a senator from South Carolina, received sustained, booming applause for criticism of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's handling of the attack in Benghazi, Libya, as secretary of state, an issue that has animated conservatives but had received relatively little mention Saturday.

Rubio, a senator from Florida, has been viewed with skepticism among many conservatives for his previous support for a comprehensive immigration reform package in the Senate. On Saturday, though, he appealed to many in the crowd with substantive answers on immigration, the Islamic State and entitlement reform.

Edward Wollner, a supporter of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, said Rubio's performance made him "a little bit more viable."

"Honestly, I came in pretty closed-minded on Rand," Wollner said. "Rubio I had kind of written off as a young, one-term senator, but he could actually be competitive in a general election."

Many attendees were complimentary toward all the candidates who appeared on Saturday, and far from ready to commit to one with the caucuses still more than six months away.

"It's a no-lose situation, if you're a conservative, at this point," said Scott Schaefer, a pastor from Davenport who described himself not as a Republican but as a "Christian conservative compassionate capitalist constitutionalist."

"This country needs a pastor, someone to shepherd this country."