Bill O’Reilly suggested that Donald Trump got his John McCain smear from a Chris Rock comedy routine. Only O’Reilly was not kidding. And neither was Trump.
It’s true Rock mocked McCain’s image of a war hero for having been captured. In his 2008 stand-up routine in which Rock was openly supporting President Obama, he said, “There’s a lot of guys in jail that got captured. I don’t want to vote for nobody that got captured. I want to vote for the mother***** that got away!”
O’Reilly played the clip from Rock which you can watch below. “Rock didn’t take any heat for that,” O’Reilly said. “But I think subliminally, I think that’s what that was all about.”
Guest Brit Hume added, “Something similar was said by Al Franken back in the day.” Belittling McCain because he was captured “has been around for a while,” Hume continued, “and has not always emanated from the mouths of people you would like to be president of the United States.”
“Or you have any respect for at all,” O’Reilly chimed in.
But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Rock is a comedian, not somebody running for president and not even a serious pundit. Trump, on the other hand, is supposed to be on the same side as McCain and, as a presidential candidate for the GOP, acting like a colleague, not a Democratic comedian excited by the prospect of the first African American president.
Watch the ridiculous comparison below, from the July 20 The O'Reilly Factor.
And then, validating tRump by using a Chris Rock take-down when McCain was the actual nominee for President? No wonder you ‘Cons are so fond of continually blaming Bill Clinton for things he did 15 to 20 years ago while forgetting all the problems that can be directly laid at Dubya’s feet (not just the 9/11 oversight but also the failure of the wars against the Taliban and Iraq—the latter leading directly to ISIS—and the economic crisis of 2008). Your viewers have goldfish memories and you and your fellow pundits have convenience memories. (I see you’ve forgotten St Ronnie’s “11th Commandment” here—“Thou shalt speak no ill of fellow Republicans.”)