A leader of New York’s Vietnam Veterans Plaza has come forward in defense of Donald Trump after the Republican presidential candidate came under fire for disparaging Sen. John McCain’s status as a war hero.
According to Vincent McGowan, a board member of the organization, Trump “has not been a bad guy to us.” Instead, Trump donated $1 million dollars to see that the property in lower Manhattan could be properly transformed into a memorial site, ABC News reports.
As far back as 1995, Trump donated $175,000 to the group to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. He also allowed event organizers to make use of his private helicopter.
“When we need help, really at the bottom of the barrel, I don’t know where we would be without him,” McGowan told ABC News.
The spat between Trump and McCain was initially kicked off last week when McCain suggested that Trump had “fired up the crazies” regarding immigration. In response, Trump stated that McCain graduated from the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy, making him a “dummy.” He then later courted more controversy by suggesting in front of the Family Leadership Council in Iowa that McCain earned his status as a war hero “because he was captured.”
Since then, Trump has refused to apologize, mostly because he thinks McCain has done little to help veterans. McCain fired back a response on Monday, saying that Trump owes an apology not to him, but to “the families of those who have sacrificed in conflict.” McCain added that he thinks his senior officers during the Vietnam War deserve the appellation of war hero much more than him.
Other GOP presidential candidates have called for Trump to apologize, and former Texas Governor Rick Perry has stated that Trump should drop out of the race.
On Tuesday, in a further effort to display support for the military, Donald Trump ordered flags at all Trump properties to be flown at half-staff, in order to remember the four Marines and one sailor killed last week in a brutal shooting. He also established a hotline for veterans to give suggestions about how to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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