My fellow Americans –
Like President Trump, I was not invited to any of the John McCain memorial services, so I offer my final thoughts here.
McCain’s service to his country while being held as a POW in Vietnam was admirable beyond measure.
Because his father was commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, the Vietnamese offered to release McCain, not as a gesture of mercy, but as a propaganda coup, and to show other POWs that members of the elite were willing to be treated preferentially.
McCain stated that he would only accept the offer if every man captured before him was released as well. This enraged the Vietnamese, and McCain’s subsequent five years as a POW went very badly for him, as he doubtlessly knew they would.
Liberals have been very kind to McCain this week because 1) he’s dead, and 2) he was an enemy of President Trump. Not mentioned is that when he was running for president in 2008, liberals compared him with Hitler, just like they’ve done with every other Republican candidate since World War II.
Also not mentioned this week: his first wife, Carol, whom he divorced in 1980.
In 1969, during the time her husband was being held as a POW, the car she was driving skidded off an icy Pennsylvania highway into a telephone pole. She was hospitalized for six months and had 23 reconstructive operations over the next two years.
Her medical care was paid for by Ross Perot, a businessman and POW advocate.
When she and her husband were reunited in 1973, she was four inches shorter, in a wheelchair or on crutches, and substantially heavier than when he had last seen her.
In 1979, John McCain began a relationship with Cindy Lou Hensley, 18 years his junior and heiress to Hensley & Co., the third-largest Anheuser-Busch distributor and one of the largest privately held companies in America.
In 1980, he filed for divorce.
Perot’s assessment: “After he came home, he walked with a limp, she [Carol McCain] walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona and the rest is history.”
One assumes that Carol McCain was on this week’s Do Not Invite list, along with President Trump and Sarah Palin. I didn’t see Ross Perot either.
(For those of you asking “What about Sally Hemings?” in an effort to undercut my credibility on marital fidelity, I remind you that my wife was deceased and I was unmarried at that time.)
