Donald Trump has received some bitter backlash over his scathing comments about Senator John McCain’s military record, but none were as witty as Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night.
“It has been a disastrous few days for Donald Trump’s fake Presidential campaign. As you may have heard — on Saturday, Trump appeared at something called the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa — where he had some very unkind words for Arizona Senator John McCain,” the ABC late-night host said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“Can you imagine being tortured for five-and-a-half years in a Vietnamese prison camp … the Vietnamese offer to release you, and you say ‘no, not until you release the other Americans who’ve been here longer than I have,’ and then 42 years later the host of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ — a man who, the closest he ever got to battle was a fight with Rosie O’Donnell, a man whose greatest wartime accomplishment was brokering a peace treaty between Gary Busey and Meatloaf — belittles you and calls you a loser?”
During his offensive rant, the GOP presidential contender said of McCain: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
Trump, who’s well known for hosting NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” also revealed that he disliked McCain since his loss to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.
“I never liked him after that,” he said. “Because I don’t like losers.”
While McCain didn’t expect a personal apology from Trump, he did think the real estate mogul “may owe an apology to the families of those who have sacrificed in conflict and those who have undergone the prison experience in serving their country,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday.
McCain got a half-hearted “I’m sorry” from Trump later that day when he appeared on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” telling host Bill O’Reilly: “I have respect for Senator McCain. I used to like him a lot. I supported him. I raised a lot of money for his campaign against President Obama and certainly if there was a misunderstanding, I would totally take that back,” he said, after O’Reilly had told him, “Come on, Donald! You know the way it came off wasn’t correct.”
Trump also added that he would like McCain to do a better job of dealing with the immigration issue in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” airs on ABC at 11.35 p.m.