LAURIE ROBERTS

Is Donald Trump really (still?) a hero to the GOP faithful?

Laurie Roberts
opinion columnist
Donald Trump speaks during his campaign rally at the Phoenix Convention Center Saturday, July 11, 2015 in Phoenix. The business magnate and television personality has risen in polls recently with his unfiltered comments on illegal immigration.

Well, didn't Donald Trump have himself quite the weekend?

Not content with calling John McCain a "dummy" last week – this after McCain lamented that Trump had "fired up the crazies" during his recent visit to Arizona – Trump on Saturday turned up the volume on his ego.

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"I don't like losers," Trump declared at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, referring to McCain's 2008 loss to Barack Obama.

Trump: "He is not a war hero."

When the conference moderator said McCain was "war hero", Trump snapped back:

"He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, OK? I hate to tell you. He is a war hero because he was captured. OK, you can have -- I believe perhaps he is a war hero."

So says the man who received four student deferments and one medical deferment between 1964 and 1968, to avoid going to Vietnam.

On Sunday, Trump declined to apologize, explaining to ABC News: "People that fought hard and weren't captured and went through a lot, they get no credit. Nobody even talks about them. They're like forgotten. And I think that's a shame, if you want to know the truth."

And in an op-ed piece for USA Today:

"The reality is that John McCain the politician has made America less safe, sent our brave soldiers into wrong-headed foreign adventures, covered up for President Obama with the VA scandal and has spent most of his time in the Senate pushing amnesty. He would rather protect the Iraqi border than Arizona's."

Oh yeah, John McCain and Barack Obama. Everyone in Arizona knows they are big-time pals.

This morning, Trump has conceded that maybe, possibly, perhaps being a Navy pilot who was shot down in 1967 over North Vietnam, taken prisoner and tortured for five-and-one-half years and who refused early release when the enemy learned his father was an admiral, is a little like being a war hero.

But. "he's done a horrible job for the vets," he told the Today Show's Matt Lauer.

This is the guy who wants to lead us, to be the next commander in chief.

The guy who wants to have his hand on the button for our nuclear warheads and isn't that a comforting thought.

McCain on Monday graciously took the high road – one Trump couldn't find even with the assistance of GPS – and said no apology is necessary. To him, that is.

"But I think he may owe an apology to the families of those who have sacrificed in conflict and those who have undergone the prison experience in serving our country," McCain told MSNBC's Morning Joe.

Trump still isn't apologizing. He can't. Ego won't allow it.

Some are questioning how this guy could be such a draw to the GOP faithful. Not me. There are elements of the party's right-wing that would follow anyone who promised to build the Berlin Wall of walls on our southern border. And if the Promised One knocks around the hated John McCain in the process? Well, that's just a bonus.

I know that politics is a blood sport and has become bloodier every year. But are there no boundaries any more? Nothing that Trump won't do in order to stand apart from the cast of thousands running for the GOP nomination?

And is that OK?

That is something only his devoted followers -- the ones who see Trump as the hero -- can answer.