''I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.'' - California Gov. Arnold Scharzengger

''I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.'' - California Gov. Arnold Scharzengger

Ahnold believes that gay men should marry lesbians?

"The fundamentals of the economy are strong" John McCain, 2008.

Consistently voting against veterans :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-friedman/mccains-non-support-for-t_b_131046.html

His terrible flying skills:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/06/nation/na-aviator6

Trump was all the news on the weekend. It could be he believes that all publicity positive or negative is good.

This article claims Trump was misquoted.

Donald_Trump_March_2015

Donald Trump appears to have gotten under the skin of not only Democrats, but also fellow Republicans and the news media. Has that subjected Trump, a Republican presidential candidate, to unfair and/or inaccurate reporting?

An article in the Washington Post today is headlined, “Trump slams McCain for being ‘captured’ in Vietnam.”

The article’s lead sentence states, “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump slammed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a decorated Vietnam War veteran, on Saturday by saying McCain was not a war hero because he was captured by the North Vietnamese [emphasis added].”

Is this report accurate?

In fact, Trump’s actual quote is the opposite of what is presented in the Post’s first sentence.

Discussion

1. The Post did not provide context at the outset disclosing that McCain and Trump have been feuding, with McCain characterizing some Trump supporters as “crazies” and Trump stating that McCain graduated last in his class in Annapolis. The charged rhetoric continued at the conservative Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa this weekend.

2. When a panelist characterized McCain as a “war hero,” the Post is accurate in reporting that Trump initially said McCain is “not a war hero.” But then, Trump immediately modified his statement saying– four times– that McCain is a war hero:

“He is a war hero.”

“He’s a war hero because he was captured.”

“He’s a war hero, because he was captured.”

“I believe, perhaps, he’s a war hero. But right now, he’s said some very bad things about a lot of people.”

3. Did Trump say McCain is not a war hero because he was captured? No, not in the exchanges represented in the Post.

https://sharylattkisson.com/fact-check-the-washington-post-on-donald-trump-and-john-mccain/

I saw a video of him saying this:

“He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured."

He has tried to walk it back since. That's been his MO, say something that is just outrageous enough that it gets headlines, then spend the next few hours/days/weeks claiming he was misquoted and taken out of context and that's not what he meant, etc. etc. so the alloaks of the world can defend him and claim he's just the victim of the liberal media conspiracy.

"The fundamentals of the economy are strong" John McCain, 2008.

Consistently voting against veterans :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-friedman/mccains-non-support-for-t_b_131046.html

His terrible flying skills:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/06/nation/na-aviator6

And what does that have to do with what Trump said? none of that has anything to do with the fact that the man served his country in an unpopular war, was a POW for over 5 years suffering unspeakable torture and was indeed a war hero.

"I like people who weren’t captured."

What does that even mean?

Anyway, IMO, he wanted to jab back at McCain and this was how it came out in the moment. He's campaigning as if he were Don Rickles. 😛

The whole conversation in context is entertaining, especially since he is being interviewed by Frank Luntz, a guy who knows quite a bit about what and what not to say.

Trump just fires out those populist applause lines, maybe a bit sad that the applause comes so easily.

Evidently Trump has a bug up his ass about McCain for some time as he is quoted as having disparaged his war record going back to 2000 according to this author.

http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/Karaagac_Donald_Trump.htm

"The fundamentals of the economy are strong" John McCain, 2008.

Consistently voting against veterans :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-friedman/mccains-non-support-for-t_b_131046.html

His terrible flying skills:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/06/nation/na-aviator6

And what does that have to do with what Trump said? none of that has anything to do with the fact that the man served his country in an unpopular war, was a POW for over 5 years suffering unspeakable torture and was indeed a war hero.

Per the title of the thread, I wanted to know if anyone could think of a dumber comment that what Trump said about McCain NOT being a war hero.

McCain's "fundamentals of the economy" statement during the fall of 2008 - which basically sank his campaign - is actually a good contender, but as dumb as that comment was, I don't think it is as stupid as the "not a war hero" comment. Unbelievably dumb.

The only comments that I can think of that can be considered as part of the conversation (but still nowhere near as dumb as Trump's comment) were Mondale saying he was going to raise taxes and Gary Hart inviting the press to try to catch him cheating on his wife.

Still, saying a guy who was tortured for FIVE years in a Vietnam POW camp is "not a war hero" at a campaign event where you are running for president? I am still in shock at unbelievably Stupid this was.

Per the title of the thread, I wanted to know if anyone could think of a dumber comment that what Trump said about McCain NOT being a war hero.

Dumber as in just dumber? One could crash the server with Bushisms alone. Or dumb because of the ensuing fallout? That's tougher.

Per the title of the thread, I wanted to know if anyone could think of a dumber comment that what Trump said about McCain NOT being a war hero.

Dumber as in just dumber? One could crash the server with Bushisms alone. Or dumb because of the ensuing fallout? That's tougher.

Maybe I am giving Trump too much credit but I think his comments are calculated to cause controversy and get him press while I think Bush was just a dummy.

Also, while I am sure he made some, I don't remember off the top of my head any of Bush's comments that were as ignorant as Trumps which is why I think he is calculated.

Where was trump during the vietnam war?, his daddys money kept him from having to serve. he should s.t.f.u.

While John McCain was POW, Donald Trump was living the good life

It was the spring of 1968 and Donald Trump had it good.

He was 21 years old and handsome with a full head of hair. He avoided the Vietnam War draft on his way to earning an Ivy League degree. He was fond of fancy dinners, beautiful women and outrageous clubs. Most important, he had a job in his father’s real estate company and a brain bursting with money-making ideas that would make him a billionaire.

“When I graduated from college, I had a net worth of perhaps $200,000,” he said in his 1987 autobiography “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” written with Tony Schwartz. “I had my eye on Manhattan.”

More than 8,000 miles away, John McCain sat in a tiny, squalid North Vietnamese prison cell. The Navy pilot’s body was broken from a plane crash, starvation, botched operations and months of torture.

As Trump was preparing to take Manhattan, McCain was trying to relearn how to walk.

The stark contrast in their fortunes was thrown into sharp relief Saturday when Trump belittled McCain during a campaign speech in Iowa.

“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said of McCain, a Republican U.S. senator from Arizona.

“He’s a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said sarcastically. “I like people that weren’t captured.”

Trump’s comments drew scorn from his fellow Republican presidential contenders. But Trump didn’t back down.

“When I left the room, it was a total standing ovation,” he told ABC News in reference to his already infamous Iowa speech. “It was wonderful to see. Nobody was insulted.”

In fact, a lot of people were insulted.

“John McCain is a hero, a man of grit and guts and character personified,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement. “He served and bled and endured unspeakable acts of torture. His captors broke his bones, but they couldn’t break his spirit, which is why he refused early release when he had the chance. That’s heroism, pure and simple, and it is unimpeachable.”

If Trump doesn’t think that that’s heroic, then what, exactly, is admirable in his eyes?

And what was he doing while McCain was locked up in a jungle dungeon?

DEEP DIVIDE BETWEEN THE TWO

The answer reveals deep divides in the two men’s lives and claims to leadership. They may similarly embrace free enterprise, but when it comes to character, the two Republican presidential hopefuls could hardly be more different.

McCain famously followed his father and grandfather – both admirals – into the Navy. He has said his role model was Teddy Roosevelt, the barrel-chested, bear-hunting war hero turned president. He also saw his grandfather and father as heroes too, as he wrote in his autobiography, “Faith of My Fathers.”

“My grandfather was a naval aviator, my father a submariner. They were my first heroes, and earning their respect has been the most lasting ambition of my life.”

Growing up in Queens, Trump’s role models were more … theatrical.

“Two of the people I admired most and who I kind of studied for the way they did things were the great Flo Ziegfeld, the Broadway producer, and Bill Zeckendorf, the builder,” he told the New York Times in 1984. “They created glamour, and the pageantry, the elegance, the joy they brought to what they did was magnificent.”

McCain grew up in a military household. Trump grew up in a home dominated by his hard-charging, penny-pinching businessman father.

Both young men had rebellious streaks. At the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, McCain was known as a “tough, mean little (expletive)” who “was defiant and flouted the rules” but never enough to get kicked out, according to Robert Timberg’s “The Nightingale’s Song.”

McCain enlisted in the Navy in 1958. Around the same time, Trump was sent to the New York Military Academy to straighten him out after his own youthful transgressions. “He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small,” his father told the Times in 1983.

TRUMP ‘ATTRACTED TO GLAMOUR’

But the similarities stopped there. Despite a successful stint at the military school, Trump doesn’t seem to have been eager to enlist. It was 1964 and the Vietnam War was escalating.

He considered going to film school in California. “I was attracted to the glamour of the movies,” he said in “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” adding that he “admired” Hollywood’s “great showmen. But in the end I decided real estate was a much better business.”

Instead Trump attended Fordham for two years before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he took economics courses at its famed Wharton School. (According to a book by Gwenda Blair, Trump was allowed to transfer into the Ivy League school because of family connections, and has exaggerated his performance at Penn.)

During his time in school, Trump received four student deferments from the draft.

“If I would have gotten a low (draft) number, I would have been drafted. I would have proudly served,” he told ABC News. “But I got a number, I think it was 356. That’s right at the very end. And they didn’t get – I don’t believe – past even 300, so I was – I was not chosen because of the fact that I had a very high lottery number.”

As Trump was enjoying the Ivy League and avoiding the war, McCain was about to become one of its most high-profile casualties.

The lieutenant commander had been flying for months, conducting targeted strikes on North Vietnam. He had already been injured in an aircraft carrier fire that killed 134 fellow sailors. And he had already made a name for himself as a pilot.

On Oct. 25, 1967, McCain had destroyed two enemy MiG fighter planes parked on a runway outside Hanoi. He begged to go out the next day, too.

But as he flew into Hanoi again on Oct. 26, his jet’s warning lights began to flash.

“I was on my 23rd mission, flying right over the heart of Hanoi in a dive at about 4,500 feet, when a Russian missile the size of a telephone pole came up – the sky was full of them – and blew the right wing off my Skyhawk dive bomber,” he wrote in a 1973 account of his ordeal. “It went into an inverted, a most straight-down spin. I pulled the ejection handle, and was knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection.”

McCain regained consciousness when his parachute landed him in a lake. The explosion had shattered both arms and one of his legs. With 50 pounds of gear on him and one good limb, he struggled to swim to the surface.

North Vietnamese dragged him to shore. Then stripped him to his underwear and began “hollering and screaming and cursing and spitting and kicking at me.”

“One of them slammed a rifle butt down on my shoulder, and smashed it pretty badly,” he wrote. “Another stuck a bayonet in my foot. The mob was really getting up-tight.”

He was interrogated for four days, losing consciousness as his captors tried to beat information out of him. But he refused to talk.

As the voluble Trump was already making a name for himself sweet-talking deals for his dad’s real estate developing company, McCain was clamming up in his filthy prison camp.

And as Trump drove around Manhattan in his father’s limo, McCain was refusing to mention his dad for fear of handing valuable intelligence to the enemy.

McCain might have died from his injuries had the North Vietnamese not found out on their own that his father was an admiral. Instead, they moved him to a hospital and performed several botched operations on him. They sliced his knee ligaments by accident and couldn’t manage to set his bones.

“They had great difficulty putting the bones together, because my arm was broken in three places and there were two floating bones,” he wrote. “I watched the guy try to manipulate it for about an hour and a half trying to get all the bones lined up. This was without benefit of Novocain.”

That Christmas, as Trump was celebrating the holiday with his family, McCain was starving in a prison camp called “The Plantation.”

“I was down to about 100 pounds from my normal weight of 155,” he wrote. “I was told later on by (cellmate) Major Day that they didn’t expect me to live a week.”

Rest of article: http://www.pressherald.com/2015/07/20/while-john-mccain-was-pow-donald-trump-was-living-the-good-life/

Bush made some pretty funny/dumb comments like the "fool me once" performance but that one was just not remembering a quote. The dumbest comment that I remember Bush making was that dinner where he said "I see the Haves and Have Mores are here tonight or as I refer to you 'my base'" and "those weapons of mass destruction got to be around here somewhere." Oh yeah and "bring it on." That was pretty stupid.
Still. I am not a fan of Bush (or any of any president of the last 30 years) but in Bush's case to my eyes you have someone who appears to be adding a grain of salt to these comments. Further, I think Bush apologized for the "Bring it on" comment. Not sure.

Trump on the other hand does not sound to me like he is kidding. He sounds like a spoiled idiot.
In just what?, the last three weeks, he has alienated huge swaths of (if not virtually the entire) the latino and military voting blocks. That is just stupefying incompetence.

Also, I don't think this is a publicity stunt. He has had two shows cancelled and boycotts organized against his businesses. Can't imagine insulting POWs is going to help your bottom line.

Just for fun, here is a list of dumb comments from politicians:

http://matadornetwork.com/change/20-of-the-most-ludicrous-political-quotes-of-all-time/

My favorites are #4 and #16.

Just for fun, here is a list of dumb comments from politicians:

http://matadornetwork.com/change/20-of-the-most-ludicrous-political-quotes-of-all-time/

My favorites are #4 and #16.

Oh. My. God.

We have a new winner. Even DUMBER than Trump:

20. “We had no domestic attacks under Bush – we’ve had one under Obama.”

Rudy Giuliani, Good Morning America, 2010

Interesting observation from the man who was mayor of New York City in September of 2001.

I'll toss this one into the ring:
"The facts show that people who are raped — who are truly raped — the juices don't flow, the body functions don't work and they don't get pregnant." .... “Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever...... “To get pregnant, it takes a little cooperation. And there ain’t much cooperation in a rape.” ~ North Carolina Rep Henry Aldridge

“We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”

-Secretary of the Interior James Watt during a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce explaining the diversity of the newly formed U.S. Commission on Fair Market Value Policy for Federal Coal Leasing, September 21, 1983

Bush made some pretty funny/dumb comments like the "fool me once" performance but that one was just not remembering a quote. The dumbest comment that I remember Bush making was that dinner where he said "I see the Haves and Have Mores are here tonight or as I refer to you 'my base'" and "those weapons of mass destruction got to be around here somewhere." Oh yeah and "bring it on." That was pretty stupid.
Still. I am not a fan of Bush (or any of any president of the last 30 years) but in Bush's case to my eyes you have someone who appears to be adding a grain of salt to these comments. Further, I think Bush apologized for the "Bring it on" comment. Not sure.

Trump on the other hand does not sound to me like he is kidding. He sounds like a spoiled idiot.
In just what?, the last three weeks, he has alienated huge swaths of (if not virtually the entire) the latino and military voting blocks. That is just stupefying incompetence.

Also, I don't think this is a publicity stunt. He has had two shows cancelled and boycotts organized against his businesses. Can't imagine insulting POWs is going to help your bottom line.

The President Bush Top 10 Bushisms, according to Slate:

1. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."—Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

2. "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

3. "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

4. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."—Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

5. "Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican."—declining to answer reporters' questions at the Summit of the Americas, Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001

6. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.''—Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

7. "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."—Washington, D.C., April 18, 2006

8. "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."—Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

9. "I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that."—discussing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as quoted by the Sun newspaper, June 27, 2007

10. "And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq."—meeting with Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008

Now we're cooking!

This could have gone down as Bush's worst comment if he hadn't caught himself. Check out the expression on Laura Bush's face. He clearly had her worried:

OK...he didn't actually speak it, but...