‘New York Times’ Reveals Additional John McCain Insult By Trump

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Amidst a nationwide outcry over a report from The Atlantic revealing that President Donald Trump had apparently referred to American service members killed in action as “suckers” and “losers,” a former Trump administration official has revealed that Trump apparently wanted to have flags raised back up again after they’d been lowered to half-staff at federal buildings after the death of John McCain. Miles Taylor, who worked in the Department of Homeland Security for about two years including as chief of staff to the Trump-appointed department chief Kirstjen Nielsen, made the revelation to The New York Times

The recent Atlantic article did note that Trump was apparently upset when flags were lowered to half-staff to honor McCain, who he’d frequently antagonized when the late public figure was still alive. Taylor’s account seems to confirm that aspect of the Atlantic article. He explained to the Times that he was in Australia on an official government business trip when the developments began unfolding back in Washington.

Discussing the time shortly after the Department of Homeland Security issued an order to lower the flags, Taylor says:

‘I get someone from the White House, a senior person there, who calls and says, “What is going on with the flags. The president is upset, this has gone out too soon and he doesn’t want it to happen.”.. I was then asked, “Would you guys be able to rescind the directive?”.. They never ended up giving us that order, but the intimation I got was, “This shouldn’t have happened.”‘

Taylor explains that he told the administration official he was speaking with about the issue that the department would need a “compelling reason for the White House to order” the team to retract the order to lower the flags.

Trump has insisted that the story in The Atlantic is false, but it lines up pretty closely with his well-documented public behavior. For instance, in one of the first high-profile debacles of his 2016 campaign, he mocked the idea that McCain — who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam — was a “hero” at all.