WASHINGTON — Scarcely a week after Donald Trump’s campaign decided to accuse the father of a U.S. Army officer who died protecting his men in Iraq of supporting anti-American Muslim extremists, a group of veterans gathered near the Capitol on Thursday to demand that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) rescind his endorsement of Trump.
“The Commander in Chief of the U.S. military is the leader of one of the most diverse militaries on earth. Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist and he is unfit for that position,” said Nate Terani, who served in the U.S. Navy for a decade. “It should be the solemn duty of Republican lawmakers like Sen. John McCain to denounce and unendorse Donald Trump.”
Terani and four other veterans came to the Capitol to deliver McCain a petition, organized by progressive group MoveOn.org in conjunction with veterans group Common Defense PAC, calling for him to revoke his support for the Republican presidential nominee.
Trump has repeatedly made inflammatory remarks about soldiers, veterans, and how he would wield U.S. military force if elected. But it was his response to Khizr and Ghazala Khan’s appearance at the Democratic National Convention, when Trump suggested Ghazala hadn’t spoken herself because “she probably, maybe wasn’t allowed to have anything to say” about her son who died in combat, that prompted Common Defense PAC to launch the petition.
Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist and he is unfit for [Commander in Chief].
Over 100,000 people have signed on to the letter after Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic and alarming behavior on the campaign trail, where he has alienated veterans with his attacks on Gold Star families and horrified military officials with his elementary understanding of foreign policy.
“Many of us who have served have spent the past months listening to Donald Trump threaten to use the US military for evil,” said Alexander McCoy, a Marine who retired in 2013 at the rank of Sergeant. “Over the past week we have listened to him insult Gold Star families and veterans across the country. I’m done listening. I’ve heard enough.”
“Sen. McCain,” McCoy went on, “you have heard enough too.”
McCain’s Odd Loyalty To Trump
Despite Trump publicly and repeatedly insulting his war record, McCain tepidly endorsed Trump at the end of the Republican primary fight. “You have to listen to people that have chosen the nominee of our Republican Party,” McCain told CNN in May. “I think it would be foolish to ignore them.”
Since then, the senator has criticized Trump for his comments about the military. But McCain, who has served the public in one capacity or another since 1958, has let his endorsement of the brash businessman stand. The tension seemed to bother Mickiela Montoya, an eight-year Army National Guard and Army Reserves veteran who spoke at Thursday’s press conference.
“[Trump]’s only interested in his own personal profit, not in service. His history reflects that. Please withdraw your endorsement immediately,” Montoya said.
Do not be afraid of this man.
Terani, 39, is an Iranian American veteran from McCain’s own state of Arizona. He said Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the country was his first wake-up call about the campaign, but it was Trump’s statements about McCain that really triggered alarm bells.
“He said something like ‘well he got captured, I don’t root for guys that get captured.’ It was just this thunderbolt that hit me,” said Terani, who was the first Muslim American to be selected to serve in the U.S. Navy Presidential Honor Guard. “This man fundamentally has no respect for the military, no respect for our sacred American ideals, or for the reasons that someone like John McCain served. That Donald Trump could be so blasé about slandering a man like that, it hit me so hard.”
Those attacks were especially hard to stomach from a man who got five draft deferments during the same war where McCain was shot down and imprisoned. But it was watching Khizr and Ghazala Khan speak, and hearing Trump’s snide response to their grief, that prompted Terani to join Thursday’s action.
Trump Insults Of The Khans Were Last Straw
“Khizr Khan could be my dad, my uncle. In his accent, everything, it was like having a member of my family up there,” Terani told ThinkProgress. “We were both crying, my mom and I. You could see that Ghazala Khan was trying not to look at Capt. Humayun Khan’s picture they had on stage, that she was trying not to cry, that she was so poised. And then to have Trump slander them like that, the implication he’s making that somehow all women are oppressed in Islam.”
Veterans also expressed fear that a Trump presidency would erode the progress that the military has made in the last few years.
“I served at a time before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” said Desert Storm veteran Jim Lyons, who also fought for the law’s repeal.
Khizr Khan could be my dad.
“But now I see something happening. I see fear and divisiveness being sown by a candidate for President of the United States, for Commander in Chief. I fear that the hard-fought gains the United States and U.S. military have made in the last several years will evaporate under a Donald Trump presidency.”
Before the press conference wound down and the soldiers, sailors, and marines gathered the petition boxes for a march over to McCain’s Senate office, four-year Army veteran Crystal Cravens put an even finer point on what these men and women are asking lawmakers to do.
“I am asking our elected officials to do what they have asked so many of us to do: To stand together against any threat, foreign or domestic,” Cravens said.
“Do not be afraid of this man. He does not represent what this country stands for.”