On the recordSeptember 9, 2020
in 2015, when I heard then-candidate Donald Trump denigrate the service of my friend, the late Senator John McCain, suggesting that he was a loser and that his status as a POW was somehow cause for shame or embarrassment, I was rock-solid certain that the America I knew and loved would never allow such a man to occupy the office of the President. I was wrong. The McCain attack began a slow reveal of the unsurprising moral bankruptcy of a man and the surprising willingness of Republican leadership to tolerate that moral void. The reveal reached a new level last week with Jeffrey Goldberg's reporting--significantly verified by other reporters--that President Trump as Commander in Chief still denigrates the service of military members, calling them ``suckers'' and ``losers.'' The Trump campaign protested loudly against the charge, but in the same instant put out a social media message ridiculing Joe Biden as he visited the grave of his son Beau, an Iraq war veteran, after church last Sunday. As a Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the father of a U.S. marine, I find President Trump's attack on our military infuriating. In an era when his countrymen were risking their lives in Southeast Asia, the President dodged service with a timely and miraculously short-lived diagnosis of bone spurs.…
