Donald Trump attack a ‘gift’ to John McCain, observers say

Sen. John McCain took blow after blow from celebrity presidential contender Donald Trump over the weekend, but he should be smiling, observers say, because he is poised to reap a political windfall.

Trump’s mocking Saturday of McCain’s record as a prisoner of war in Vietnam earned Trump almost universal condemnation and McCain praise from most of the other 2016 Republican presidential candidates, several veterans organizations and even President Barack Obama’s White House and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

The shower of accolades hailing McCain as a “hero” from high-profile Republicans such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the kind of political advertising money can’t buy. McCain’s GOP foreign-policy foil, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, even said he honors McCain’s “service and the sacrifices he made for our country,” despite not seeing eye to eye with him on many issues.

As McCain’s bid for a sixth U.S. Senate term bid revs up in Arizona, voters were reminded through televised black-and-white images of how McCain long ago was shot down over Hanoi and endured more than five years of brutal conditions and torture while a captive of the North Vietnamese from 1967 to 1973.

PREVIOUS: McCain says Trump owes apology to veterans

TRUMP:I don't need to be lectured

RELATED:Trump asked Arizona treasurer to run against McCain

For older voters, it’s a familiar story but probably not one they’ve contemplated in a while. Younger voters who are more familiar with Iraq and Afghanistan than Vietnam may be getting a crash course in the details of McCain’s captivity, though the term “war hero” probably doesn’t carry as much weight as it once did, experts said.

“It reminds people of the best thing about John McCain,” said John J. “Jack” Pitney Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. “It started with his criticism of Trump, which Trump couldn’t let go of and Trump responded by unintentionally handing McCain a big gift. So long as the argument is about McCain’s service in Vietnam, he wins.”

Even McCain’s 2016 Senate rivals quickly waded into the Trump fray on Saturday.

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., tweeted to Trump that his attacks on McCain “are far beyond bounds of decency” and demanded that he apologize to McCain and all veterans.

“You’ll never hear me criticize Sen McCain for his military service, only his liberal policies that refuse to rein in out of control Fed govt,” tweeted Kelli Ward, a state senator from Lake Havasu City who announced last week that she is challenging McCain in the GOP primary.

Trump made the comments about McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, amid an intense political feud that erupted after McCain criticized derogatory comments that Trump made about Mexican immigrants. Speaking in Phoenix on July 11, Trump ridiculed McCain and suggested that he is vulnerable in the state’s August 2016 Republican primary. McCain later told the New Yorker that Trump’s Arizona appearance had “fired up the crazies.”

Trump called McCain a “dummy” on Twitter and then unloaded on him again Saturday at the socially conservative Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, calling him a loser.

“He’s not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said. “I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you.”

Despite the outcry from groups such as the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Concerned Veterans for America, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Trump has stubbornly refused to apologize.

In a USA TODAY guest column, Trump, who did not serve in the Vietnam War, again attacked McCain for sending “our brave soldiers into wrong-headed foreign adventures,” for covering up “for President Obama with the VA scandal” and for “pushing amnesty” for undocumented immigrants. Trump even accused McCain of preferring to protect the Iraqi border than Arizona’s.

“This works for McCain in all sorts of ways: Donald Trump now has made John McCain look like the level-headed voice of reason,” Pitney said. “The Donald has been very clever about getting publicity, but it’s not smart to energize veterans against you.”

In a written statement, Pete Hegseth, CEO of the right-leaning Concerned Veterans for America, ripped Trump as “a man who received four student deferments to avoid service in Vietnam” and therefore has no credibility to criticize McCain.

“Donald Trump also revealed that he has no idea what he is talking about with regards to reforming and fixing the VA,” Hegseth said. “If he did, he would have known that Senator McCain has been a leader in fighting to give veterans more health care choices and to hold the VA accountable for its failures.”

Bruce Merrill, a veteran Arizona political scientist and pollster who has followed McCain’s political career since his first race for Congress in 1982, said the episode demonstrates Trump’s divisiveness and lack of depth and political maturity.

“For Arizona, this clearly helps McCain,” said Merrill, a senior research fellow at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. “From the few soundbites I’ve seen from McCain, he’s doing what he needs to do, which is just to be professional. The worst thing that McCain could do would be to react to that.”

McCain maintained silence on Saturday and Sunday but did some media interviews on Monday. He did not make himself available to speak to The Arizona Republic, but he told other outlets that Trump should apologize to other POWs and veterans, not him.

“Frankly, I preferred the company of those heroes that I had the opportunity of serving with, and leaders like (fellow POW) Col. Bud Day and other congressional Medal of Honor winners who inspired us,” McCain said Monday morning on Phoenix radio station KFYI-AM (550). “So I have a disagreement, obviously, with Mr. Trump about ... what his preference is.”

McCain said he didn’t need to defend his record on veterans’ issues, which includes the recent passage of VA-reform legislation that he led, but did try to clarify his own pejorative reference to the pro-Trump “crazies” in Arizona. McCain for years has been at odds with the right wing of the Arizona Republican Party, which formally censured him as too liberal in 2014.

“It’s a rough-and-tumble business,” McCain said on the radio. “I have town-hall meetings all the time and people call me crazy. I thought it was a term of endearment. ... I look forward to hundreds more town-hall meetings with them so that we can exchange views. I’m proud of all of the political spectrum in Arizona.”

ROBERTS:Is Trump really (still) a hero to GOP faithful?

MONTINI:Will Trump triumph after trashing McCain's POW record?

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, agreed that the furor overall is a plus for McCain, although he doubts that the segment of his party that doesn’t support him will change its opinion.

But while his 5 1/2 years as a POW is “the most universally popular piece of McCain’s resume,” the whole “war hero” theme might not resonate as much with Millennial voters as with past generations, Sabato said. There has been no draft for many years and the military experience no longer is as widely shared.

“It probably has less impact than before,” Sabato said generally of a candidate’s war record. “I always tell people if it mattered, then George H.W. Bush would have been re-elected, Bob Dole would have won and John McCain would have won (the presidency). But they didn’t.”

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a close ally of McCain’s, told The Republic on Monday that McCain’s “military record and heroism” is unquestionable. “Certainly, if Trump was looking to hurt McCain, it backfired big time,” Flake said.

In his political career, McCain has from time to time leaned on his status as a former prisoner of war. It was central to his presidential runs in 2000 and 2008.

In his first race for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, McCain famously cited his mobile Navy family to squelch persistent charges that he was a carpetbagger or a recent transplant to Arizona. His father and grandfather were both admirals.

“As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi,” McCain said.

In 1989, while caught up in a scandal connected to disgraced financier and developer Charles Keating, McCain also tapped his POW reputation.

“Even the Vietnamese didn’t question my ethics,” he told The Republic at the time.