WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Thursday defended Donald Trump\u2019s verbal assault against former Democratic Representative John Dingell, as members of Congress blasted the Republican president for insulting another veteran lawmaker after his death. <\/p>\n
Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress, died in February at age 92 after representing his district outside Detroit for 59 years in the House of Representatives. <\/p>\n
At a campaign rally in Dingell\u2019s home state of Michigan Wednesday night, Trump suggested the late lawmaker was in hell by saying he was \u201clooking up\u201d rather than \u201clooking down\u201d on those still living. <\/p>\n
Debbie Dingell, who won her husband\u2019s seat after he retired, lamented Trump\u2019s cutting remarks and urged him \u201cto set politics aside,\u201d adding: \u201cYour hurtful words just made my healing much harder.\u201d <\/p>\n
White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham on Thursday said Trump – whose rhetoric at the rally came as the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach him. – \u201chas been under attack.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAs we all know, the president is a counter puncher,\u201d Grisham told ABC News. \u201cIt was a very, very supportive and wild crowd, and he was just riffing on some of the things that had been happening the past few days.\u201d <\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s remarks echoed his personal attacks on former Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, who died in 2018, and drew rebuke from Republicans and Democrats. Both McCain and Dingell, two war veterans, were critical of Trump. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe president is clearly insecure,\u201d House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters at a news conference. \u201cJohn McCain, now John Dingell. What the president misunderstands is cruelty is not wit… It\u2019s not funny at all. It\u2019s very sad.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was mean, cruel, disgusting, and I wish I could say it was surprising,\u201d Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan told MSNBC as other Democrats defended Dingell on Twitter. <\/p>\n
Debbie Dingell\u2019s Republican counterpart, Representative Fred Upton, also called her husband \u201ca great Michigan legend\u201d and said \u201can apology is due.\u201d <\/p>\n Asked about Trump\u2019s insult, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to comment to reporters but praised John Dingell as a friend. <\/p>\n In television interviews on Thursday, Dingell vowed to focus on her constituents, telling CNN: \u201cIf he thinks he\u2019s going to keep me from doing my job, I\u2019m going to be right back at it.\u201d <\/p>\n Asked if she wanted Trump to apologize, Dingell added: \u201cI don\u2019t want to politicize my husband … It is still something that I\u2019m really grieving over. This Thanksgiving was really hard and Christmas is harder.\u201d <\/p>\n Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Dan Grebler<\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feeds.reuters.com\/~r\/Reuters\/PoliticsNews\/~3\/WLYqSTrtDoI\/lawmakers-blast-trump-after-president-insults-late-lawmaker-dingell-idUSKBN1YN26F<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Thursday defended Donald Trump\u2019s verbal assault against former Democratic Representative John Dingell, as members of Congress blasted the Republican president for insulting another veteran lawmaker after his death. Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress, died in February at age 92 after representing his district outside Detroit for 59 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-199804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}