Jack LeGros, a helicopter door gunner during the Vietnam War, was on his way into the Veterans Administrations Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center on Tuesday afternoon when I asked him what he thought about President Trumps continued attacks on late Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
I think hes an …
I cant complete that sentence in a family newspaper, but Im sure you can hazard a pretty good guess as to how LeGros finished his thought.
The veteran, 77, walked with a limp. He said he thinks exposure to Agent Orange during his time in Vietnam is causing his pain.
My foot started getting hot, like it was in hot sand, and it steadily progressed up my legs, said LeGros, who has also been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder for many years.
LeGros said he doesnt care much for Trump, period. But even veterans who support the president told me they cant understand why the president would speak with such contempt about a man who devoted his life to public service, endured years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down in Vietnam, and died of brain cancer seven months ago.
Just last weekend Trump, who was in a particularly cranky mood, tweeted about his political issues with McCain and said, incorrectly, that McCain finished last in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy.
I dont like it, said Rubin Elfman, a World War II Army veteran who served in Germany and told me he will turn 93 next month.
Elfman said he likes Trumps politics but doesnt understand his McCain obsession.
Listen, Elfman said, the man served his country.
IN 1999, I briefly rode with McCain on his Straight Talk Express as he traveled through New Hampshire in a run for the presidency. His politics werent mine, but I couldnt help but admire the man, who had trouble raising his arm high enough to comb his hair due to the wartime torture he had suffered. A short time later, in Hanoi, I visited the dank, miserable cell where McCain spent much of his five-plus years in captivity.
I once foolishly thought Trumps relentless insistence that the first black president of the United States was African would doom him as a crank, but it didnt. I thought that mocking the looks of a female opponent and the wife of another opponent in the presidential primary would be the end of him, but it wasnt.
I finally realized Trump wouldnt lose his base of supporters by saying things that were cruel, undignified, racially offensive or patently false.
But a war hero? Especially one now dead who happened to be in Trumps own party?
Of course, Trump might dispute that assessment. Our president, who did not serve in the military, infamously said of McCain:
Hes not a war hero. Hes a war hero because he was shot down. I like people that werent captured.
Trump survived that, as vile as it was, which may be why he felt emboldened to take another poke at McCain over the weekend.
