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Keller @ Large: Trump Wrong To Pick Fight With McCain

BOSTON (CBS) - If you look and listen carefully, you can learn important life lessons from just about anything, politics included.

And no matter where you stand on the issues that have divided President Trump and Senator John McCain, there is a very valuable lesson to be learned from their relationship - you've got to be very careful about the enemies you make.

You may recall that Trump made an enemy of McCain early on in his campaign when he dismissed the notion that McCain, a decorated veteran who was a prisoner of war during Vietnam, was a hero.

"I like people who weren't captured," Trump said.

McCain didn't take his revenge then, but he has been recently, killing Trump's Obamacare repeal and trashing his foreign policy in a speech Monday night.

"To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain 'the last best hope of earth' for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems," McCain said.

Trump dug his hole even deeper Monday, warning McCain to "be careful because at some point I fight back."

Something tells me McCain, who is dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis, is beyond casual intimidation at this point.

And we can all learn some good lessons from Trump's damaging miscalculation here. Things like - show some respect for veterans and war heroes, learn to apologize and don't pick fights you cannot win.

Share your views with me via email at keller@wbztv.com, or use Twitter, @kelleratlarge.

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