Donald Trump says he doesn't regret his "not a hero" insult of former POW Sen. John McCain —
doubling down on a diss that caused a furor early in the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's primary campaign.
In an interview Wednesday on the
"Imus in the Morning" radio show, Trump boasted his July attack on the Arizona lawmaker raised his poll numbers.
Buzz Feed News also posted audio of the exchange.
In his comment last July, Trump said of McCain: "He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." And though McCain said last Sunday he didn't want a personal apology for the crack, he asserted
Trump owed one to POWs.
"Well I've actually done that, Don," Trump tells the radio host. "You know frankly, I like John McCain, and John McCain is a hero. Also, heroes are people that are — whether they get caught or don't get caught — they're all heroes as far as I'm concerned. And that's the way it should be."
"So do you regret saying that?" Imus pressed.
"I don't, you know — I like not to regret anything," Trump replied. "You do things and you say things. And what I said, frankly, is what I said. And some people like what I said, if you want to know the truth. There are many people that like what I said. You know after I said that, my poll numbers went up 7 points."
"You understand that, I mean, some people liked what I said," he added. "I like John McCain, in my eyes John McCain is a hero. John McCain's a good guy."
Imus countered that someone like Trump, who got multiple Vietnam War draft deferments, shouldn't be criticizing someone like McCain at all.
"I understand that," Trump replied. "Well, I was going to college, I had student deferments. I also got a great lottery number."
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