Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry admitted Tuesday that he "got his feelings hurt" and he was "offended" by Donald Trump's campaign attacks while he was still running for president, but he got past that and he believes Trump to be the best candidate for the White House.
"I can split hairs here about all of these different issues but at the end of the day it's simple," Perry told
Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Supreme Court appointment. It ought to be easy for anyone who cares about the traditional conservative direction that this country has gone most of its life.
"That Supreme Court is going to make decisions for the next 40 years, or that individual may have the potential of affecting this country for the next 40 years. This isn't about the next four years, but about the next 40."
Perry on Monday night introduced his good friend, former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, who received the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart for his actions in 2005 facing Taliban fighters, at the Republican National Convention.
"It was a powerful crowd," said Perry. "I've seen a lot of standing ovations in my life before — it went on and on. The emotion that came out of that crowd, zeroing in on some of the people in the audience, there was a lot of tears in their eyes.
"People felt the emotion that Marcus was exuding about what he had been through and what the next generation has to stand up and do, and where we are as a country and how important this election is."
Luttrell considers Perry as more than a friend, but as a father figure. The former SEAL showed up in 2007 at the governor's mansion and asked to see Perry, and over the next few months, Perry and his wife gave the war hero a spare bedroom, helped him find a surgeon to operate on his spine, and served as his family and advisers after his memoir, "Lone Survivor" became a bestseller and then a movie, according to
The Washington Post.
"For three years — three years, they hid me in there and I recovered," Luttrell said Tuesday. "The greatest part about it is that he was running the state and his wife, she's a nurse.
"So she actually tended to my wounds and then my surgeries . . . He was a father figure to me all those years. I sat and watched and listened, all the heads of state, I just sat and watched and he put me on the path."
And Luttrell supported Perry, who he calls "one of the greatest men" he knows, in his presidential campaign, and he didn't know much about Trump beyond what he'd heard in the media.
But now that he's met Trump, he knows that he "loves his family, he's successful," and believes he can push the country in the right direction, "so obviously, I'll back him up."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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