Former Trump administration adviser Steve Bannon opined that Mitt Romney “hid behind” his religion instead of serving in the Vietnam War during a rally Tuesday night for Senate candidate Roy Moore.
Romney, who said Monday that a Moore victory would cost the GOP its “honor and integrity,” followed the tradition of young men in the LDS church by embarking on a mission at age 19. He spent 30 months in France.
Bannon noted that Moore served in the war after the time Romney lived abroad and returned home.
“By the way, Mitt, while we’re on the subject of Vietnam and honor and integrity, you avoided service, brother. Mitt, here’s how it is brother—the college deferments, we can debate that—but you hid behind your religion. You went to France to be a missionary while guys were dying in rice paddies in Vietnam,” Bannon said. “Do not talk to me about honor and integrity!”
Bannon conceded the apparent double-standard in his attack by referring to “the college deferments”—of which Trump received four to avoid draft eligibility during Vietnam. Trump also received a medical deferment for bone spurs in his heels.
Such a background did not preclude the president from attacking a different Vietnam veteran, Sen. John McCain, over his actual service and imprisonment. “He’s a war hero ‘cause he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, I hate to tell you,” said Trump in July 2015. “He’s a war hero because he was captured, OK? And I believe, perhaps, he’s a war hero. But right now he said some very bad things about a lot of people,” he continued, referring to McCain’s comment days before that Trump had “fired up the crazies” in McCain’s home state of Arizona during a rally. Bannon, who has been challenged by and feuded with McCain over his ideology, called McCain “just another senator from Arizona” during California’s GOP convention in October, while praising McCain’s military service, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“And now I’m gonna get personal,” Bannon continued his tirade against Romney on Tuesday. “You ran for commander in chief. You had five sons. Not one day of service in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have 7,000 dead and 52,000 casualties. And where were the Romneys during those wars? You want to talk about honor and integrity, brother, bring it. Bring it down here to Alabama. You have the guts to get on the stage of a man that served in Vietnam, and you expect us to believe ‘honor and integrity’? Judge Roy Moore has more honor and integrity in that pinky finger than your entire family has in his whole DNA!”
Bannon’s attacks were well-received by the crowd.
In a 2007 interview with the New York Times, Romney credited his mission with strengthening his faith. “On a mission, your faith in Jesus Christ either evaporates or it becomes much deeper. For me it became much deeper,” he said.
Romney continued to be active in the LDS church, eventually becoming the Boston area’s top Mormon authority.
Later in Bannon’s introductory remarks, he commented that Moore rose to fame after installing a large display of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama State Judicial Building.
“You have a man that I think has integrity and honor. . . . If I remember correctly, he made his international reputation on putting the Ten Commandments up. The Ten Commandments: It’s the basis of the Judeo-Christian West,” Bannon said. “And what does it tell us? Man has fallen. And man is imperfect.”
It was unclear what Bannon meant, though he said a few moments prior that Moore “never claimed, just like Donald Trump, he was perfect.”
Moore has the overwhelming support of Alabama’s evangelical population, which comprises nearly half the state’s adults. A Washington Post poll released last weekend found the Republican led his opponent Doug Jones 78 to 19 percent among white evangelicals.
