John McCain, who endured more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before becoming the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and serving Arizona for more than 30 years on Capitol Hill, died Saturday at age 81.

McCain died at 4:28 p.m. MST, his office announced. His wife and other family members were with him.

Destined to be remembered among the political giants of Arizona history, the six-term U.S. senator disclosed in July 2017 that he had been diagnosed with a deadly form of brain cancer called glioblastoma.

Meghan McCain, his TV commentator daughter, wrote Saturday on Twitter: “I love you forever – my beloved father.”

McCain was a two-time presidential candidate, losing the GOP nomination in 2000 to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush and the general election in 2008 to then-Sen. Barack Obama.

The unsuccessful White House bids were spotlight moments in a long political career that began with his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982. After two terms, McCain ascended to the U.S. Senate in 1987, replacing legendary Republican U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 was the only other Arizonan to top the national ticket of a major U.S. political party. McCain was re-elected to the Senate in 1992, 1998, 2004, 2010 and 2016. He became Arizona’s senior senator in 1995 and chairman of the influential Armed Services Committee in 2015.

Aug. 24: Sen. John McCain to discontinue medical treatment, family says

Aug. 24: As Sen. John McCain discontinues treatment for brain cancer, what will his legacy be?

Aug. 24: Outpouring of praise for Sen. John McCain follows announcement that he’s ending cancer treatment

Often called a maverick, McCain was a complicated personality and will be remembered as the most important political figure to emerge from Arizona in the past 50 years. 

He was ensnared by the “Keating Five” scandal of the late 1980s and was deemed by the Senate Ethics Committee to have demonstrated poor judgment by joining four Senate colleagues in meeting with federal thrift regulators on behalf of political benefactor Charles H. Keating Jr., a savings-and-loan tycoon and developer.

It was in the wake of that scandal, in the 1990s and early- to mid-2000s, McCain’s “maverick” reputation began to take shape, as he led fights for campaign finance reform and comprehensive immigration reform and against Big Tobacco. During his 2000 presidential run, McCain famously decried leaders of the Religious Right as “agents of intolerance,” a gutsy fight to pick for a Republican.

The ‘maverick’

In 2015, his own presidential ambitions in the past, McCain clashed with Republican Donald Trump in a public feud that extended into Trump’s time in the White House.

On July 28, 2017, McCain sided with two other GOP senators and all Democrats and cast a crucial vote — a literal thumbs-down on the Senate floor — that stalled Republican efforts to roll back the Affordable Care Act, a top Trump priority.

Unlike many of Trump’s GOP punching bags, McCain had the stature to go nose-to-nose with the president.

At one point in the early 2000s, Democrats encouraged McCain to consider switching parties, and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry approached him about serving as his running mate. But later, McCain veered to the right, a source of frequent frustrating to his previous admirers on the other side of the aisle.

March 21: Slamming Putin call, McCain goes after Trump for ‘congratulating dictators on winning sham elections’

March 18: Meghan McCain shares new photo of Sen. John McCain

Interactive: John McCain’s American story

Although some on the right sneered at what they viewed as McCain’s coziness with the national media — for years after his presidential run, he was a mainstay on the Sunday television public-affairs shows — McCain often kept local media at arm’s length and once wrote in a book that his long relationship with The Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, could fairly be described as “antagonistic.” However, the relationship with The Republic and other local media improved in later years.

McCain also had a love-hate relationship with his media-promoted reputation as a maverick, relying on it or distancing himself from it as the political circumstances warranted.

“That was a label that was given to me a long time ago,” McCain told The Republic in 2010. “I don’t decide on the labels that I am given. I said I have always acted in what I think is in the best interests of the state and the country, and that’s the way that I will always behave.”

Two presidential runs

McCain proved himself to be a thorn in the side of his GOP rival, Bush, at least early in the first term of Bush’s presidency. The McCain vs. Bush fight in 2000 had taken a bitter turn in the South Carolina primary, where McCain and his allies accused their conservative opponents of trying to smear him and his family.

However, he and Bush reconciled as McCain geared up for his second presidential run. A classic Senate hawk, McCain was a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and strongly supported Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. McCain also was a champion of the surge strategy that Bush employed in Iraq in 2007.

During the 2008 presidential race, McCain had to overcome the lingering distrust of many conservatives who resented his maverick record, which included votes against key Bush tax cuts as well as McCain’s successful push for bipartisan campaign-finance-reform legislation.

His decision to gamble on the untested and little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate was cheered by the conservative wing of the Republican Party but may have hurt the GOP ticket among independent voters.

However, McCain never had much of a chance of defeating Obama, given the political atmosphere of the time.

Voters were widely dissatisfied with Bush, whose approval numbers were bad, and war fatigue had set in. If that wasn’t bad enough, the U.S. economy melted down in September 2008, making it unlikely that another Republican would succeed Bush. The political-science models pointed to a Democratic victory.

March 13: Meghan McCain: Still no timetable for ailing father John McCain’s return to the Senate

March 4: Sen. John McCain, wife all smiles in springtime photo

“You can’t win with conditions this bad for the incumbent party,” Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said after the election. “And that’s McCain’s consolation: He did reasonably well under extremely difficult conditions. It was never meant to be.”

Looking back at the race in an August 2017 interview with The Republic, McCain largely concurred, though he stressed that Obama deserves the credit for his victory.

“One, Barack Obama was a very, very strong candidate and that’s the most important thing,” McCain said. “Second, when the stock market collapsed, it really sent us into a real drop. Third of all, I guess, Americans were ready for a change, too.

“But I’d like to emphasize the first thing I said: Barack Obama was an incredibly impressive candidate and he did a great job campaigning,” he added.

Taking on new foes

Two years after his White House defeat, the perception of McCain as an establishment moderate was still strong enough to attract a Senate primary challenger from the right: former six-term U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, a professional broadcaster who was known as a fierce foe of illegal immigration.

In the year of the conservative “tea party” uprising, McCain took no chances and greatly outspent Hayworth, destroying him in the process with an unrelenting barrage of hard-hitting TV campaign commercials. In one memorable ad aimed at Hayworth’s conservative base, McCain rebranded himself as a border hard-liner by calling for the completion of “the danged fence” between the United States and Mexico. After dispatching Hayworth in the primary, McCain effortlessly clinched a fifth Senate term in the 2010 general election.

Feb. 28: Cindy and Meghan McCain hit back at President Trump for attacking ailing Sen. John McCain

Feb. 8: Meghan McCain: Flu season concerns are keeping John McCain in Arizona

Near the end of that term, McCain found himself feuding with celebrity-billionaire-turned-presidential-candidate Trump.

In a notorious July 18, 2015, jab at McCain, Trump said McCain was “a war hero because he was captured” and that he liked “people that weren’t captured.”

Trump also derided McCain as weak on immigration and border security. McCain returned the criticism on a number of issues, including Trump’s approach to foreign policy. In October 2016, McCain finally withdrew his endorsement of Trump after a 2005 recording surfaced of Trump talking about women in crude and vulgar ways.

Their duels may have helped McCain in that they made Democrats’ election-year efforts to tether McCain to Trump, who had made a series of inflammatory comments, all but impossible. McCain effortlessly defeated U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, and dramatically outperformed Trump, who also carried Arizona on Election Day but by a much slimmer margin.

A POW in North Vietnam

John Sidney McCain III was born Aug. 29, 1936, at the Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone. His father, John S. McCain Jr., and grandfather, John S. “Slew” McCain Sr., would become the only father-son team of four-star Navy admirals in U.S. history. During World War II, Slew McCain was in charge of aircraft carriers fighting the Japanese in the Pacific and had a destroyer named in his honor in 1953. The youngest McCain followed in the footsteps of his namesakes, attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and becoming a naval aviator.

In July 1967, during the Vietnam War, McCain survived a fiery maritime disaster on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal that killed 134 people and nearly sank the ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. McCain was getting ready to take off from the deck when another plane accidentally fired a Zuni missile and hit his plane or one next to it, spilling fuel. McCain was wounded by shrapnel and narrowly escaped death himself in the blaze that followed as bombs and planes began exploding.

“The crew’s heroics kept her afloat,” McCain recalled in his 1999 memoir “Faith of My Fathers.” “They fought the inferno with a tenacity usually reserved for hand-to-hand combat. They fought it all day and well into the next, and they saved the Forrestal.”

Feb. 2: John McCain decries memo release: ‘We are doing Putin’s job for him’

Jan. 31: John McCain’s son Jack says dad ‘sounds better than the day before’

On the 40th anniversary of his getting shot down over Hanoi, North Vietnam, McCain told The Republic that the Forrestal disaster may have affected him more deeply in the long run.

“To be honest with you, the Forrestal fire seems to be a more impactful date I remember more than that of when I was shot down,” McCain said at the time.

Surviving the Forrestal crisis — the “Inferno at Sea” as the Aug. 11, 1967, cover of Life magazine dubbed it and the worst naval disaster since World War II — was just the beginning for McCain.

On Oct. 26, 1967, McCain was piloting an A-4 Skyhawk attack bomber that had taken off from the USS Oriskany when a missile blew off one of its wings. Seriously wounded, he was captured and would spend more than five brutal years as a POW.

He refused early release, which was offered to him because he was the son of a Navy admiral and would have served North Vietnamese propaganda purposes. While in custody, McCain was routinely beaten and at one point confessed that he was a “black criminal” and an “air pirate,” which he would remember as a low point of his life.

McCain finally was released, along with other POWs, in 1973.

In 1977, McCain became the Navy’s liaison to the U.S. Senate, setting into motion his future career path as a politician.

After returning to the United States, McCain’s first marriage to the former Carol Shepp fell apart, and the couple eventually divorced in 1980. He later married Cindy Hensley, daughter of a wealthy Arizona beer distributor. The two met in Hawaii. She was 17 years younger than he was. McCain retired from the Navy in 1981, and his new marriage brought him to the Phoenix area.

The POW backstory was ready-made for a politician.

Political success – and scandal

In 1982, McCain ran for and won the seat being vacated by the retiring former U.S. House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz. Though McCain was called a carpetbagger, he prevailed in a tough four-way GOP primary. He faced no serious competition in the general election.

McCain pushed back on the charge that he was a political opportunist with no roots in Arizona. He said his Navy family was forced to move often.

“As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi,” McCain said.

McCain was somewhat lucky in his first U.S. Senate race in 1986. Veteran U.S. Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., declined to run on the Republican side. Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, a popular Democrat with presidential ambitions, also decided not to try for the retiring Goldwater’s seat. A self-inflicted political wound briefly made things interesting — McCain had made an ill-advised reference to Phoenix-area retirement community Leisure World as “Seizure World,” a place where 97 percent of the people voted and “the other 3 percent were in intensive care” — but he still wound up easily defeating Democratic opponent Richard Kimball.

Dec. 26: John McCain and Jeff Flake stood up for U.S. values and unity: Arizona Republic editorial

Dec. 20: McCain ‘headed back to Washington’ after the holidays, says Arizona governor

“Occasionally, my sense of humor is ill-considered or ill-timed, and that can be a problem,” McCain later conceded in his 2002 book, “Worth the Fighting For.”

Early in his first Senate term, McCain and fellow U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., and three other senators participated in two April 1987 meetings with federal thrift regulators who were investigating California-based Lincoln Savings & Loan. The troubled business was part of Charles H. Keating Jr.’s financial empire.

Keating had donated and helped raise money for both Arizona senators. The McCain family even vacationed with Keating in the Bahamas. Once the meetings were made public, McCain and DeConcini found themselves at the heart of a major national scandal that resulted in 23 days of Senate ethics hearings.

“I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment,” McCain would later say.

The federal government seized Lincoln Savings & Loan in April 1989 and prosecuted Keating for fraud.

Dec. 18: Doctor: McCain’s setback ‘normal’ during brain cancer treatment

Dec. 17: Sen. John McCain returns to Arizona, will miss vote on tax bill

Though DeConcini, who was determined to have acted inappropriately, would not run for a fourth term in 1994, McCain sought a second Senate term in 1992 and was able to overcome the Keating Five stigma. The controversy also didn’t do much to hinder his presidential runs in 2000 and 2008 and was largely forgotten during his later years in the Senate.

“It’s ancient history,” Bruce Merrill, the late Arizona State University professor emeritus and longtime political pollster, said of the scandal upon Keating’s death in 2014. “It’s amazing he (McCain) survived that, and I guess one could argue that his political skills brought him through that.”

McCain had seven children, including television commentator and author Meghan McCain. His family lived in the central Phoenix area for years.

Follow Dan Nowicki on Twitter: @dannowicki

Dec. 14: McCain trying to ‘get rested up’ after cancer treatment, friends say

Dec. 13: ‘The View’: Joe Biden tells Meghan McCain, ‘If anyone can make it, your dad can’

Nov. 14: McCain blasts Army for considering recruits with history of self-mutilation, vows action

Nov. 6: Sen. John McCain treated for cancer therapy side effects, tear in Achilles tendon

Oct. 26: Opinion: John McCain’s 50-year anniversary: Since Vietnam plane crash, an exceptional life

Oct. 22: John McCain mocks Donald Trump’s deferment ‘bone spurs’ (without naming him)

Oct. 20: John McCain memoir, ‘The Restless Wave,’ coming in April

Oct. 19: Sen. John McCain to pay birthday visit to daughter Meghan McCain on ‘The View’

Oct. 17: Trump warns McCain. ‘At some point, I fight back. And it won’t be pretty’

Oct. 16: Emotional Sen. John McCain blasts ‘half-baked, spurious nationalism’

Sept. 27: Meghan McCain calls report Trump mocked her dad ‘abhorrent’

Sept. 27: Opinion: John McCain ran on repealing Obamacare. He broke his promise.

Sept. 24: Sen. John McCain: Doctors gave me ‘poor prognosis’ on cancer fight

Sept. 22: John McCain says he is a ‘no’ on Graham-Cassidy bill, leaving Obamacare repeal in peril

Sept. 22: Read Sen. John McCain’s statement on why he opposes the Graham-Cassidy bill

Sept. 18: Sen. John McCain reveals what really happened in the James Comey hearing

Sept. 12: Sen. John McCain to maintain Senate schedule throughout brain tumor treatment

Sept. 1: John McCain: President Trump is ‘often poorly informed, can be impulsive’

Aug. 14, 2017: After Obamacare vote, John McCain is more popular with Democrats than Republicans, poll says

Aug. 10, 2017: In absence of White House Afghanistan strategy, John McCain proposes one of of his own

Aug. 9, 2017: Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson suggests John McCain’s health may have affected his Obamacare vote

Aug. 3, 2017: McCain aims to revive immigration reform when he returns to Congress

July 30, 2017: McCain’s type of brain cancer vexes doctors, but emerging therapies are on the horizon

July 28, 2017: John McCain will begin treatment for brain tumor Monday

July 25, 2017: McCain, battling cancer, returns to Senate and casts critical health care vote

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Opinion: Arizona Sen. John McCain spent his last days fighting for civility, bipartisanship and a greater role in global security.

Let the record show that John Sidney McCain never quit on his country.  

When he nearly died in a fire that killed 134 of his shipmates on an aircraft carrier in the Tonkin Gulf, he went on to fly combat missions.

When he nearly died ejecting out of a plane over North Vietnam, he steeled himself for nearly six heroic years of captivity as an American POW.

When he nearly died from torture in a Hanoi prison, he came home and began a career of service in Congress.

And as he neared death with cancer and its punishing treatment regimen, he railed against a brutal Syrian regime and the excesses of a populist president.  

The man had no quit.

McCain’s last fight was one for decency

He came from an America that believed in the sun-faded ideals of honor and duty. And so he spent the last months of his three decades as U.S. senator making the case for honorable conduct.

In one of America’s dark hours, when the country was beset upon itself, McCain used his last great speech to call on the leaders of this country to stop savaging one another, to start working together.

Who will ever forget McCain’s return to the U.S. Senate last summer that brought every member of that body to their feet to warmly acknowledge him after doctors broke the news he had little time to live?

McCain acted as if the diagnosis were nothing. A trifle. And he had nothing to hide, appearing in public only days after surgery with a newly stitched incision above his left eye.

He was tranquil, good-natured and telling jokes.

That speech was more warning than rebuke

McCain was our senior senator, but we shared him with the world. Just about every important conference on defense and foreign affairs eagerly sought McCain’s participation because he was so highly respected in that realm.

Many of us perked up when we heard McCain’s thinly veiled criticism of Donald Trump at the 2017 Liberty Medal Award Ceremony. But to go back and read the text is to understand McCain was doing more than rebuking an irresponsible president:

“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 is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

McCain strove to make that point, even in his return to the U.S. Senate. He was putting down a marker at the end, warning us that the rest of the world has not advanced enough for America to abandon global security to the other great powers.

McCain conquered his worst impulses

If the John McCain who survived the Hanoi Hilton was not afraid to face death, he was also not afraid to face mistakes. Caught in the lair of Savings and Loan impresario Charles Keating, McCain witnessed his near political demise in the late 1980s when he and four other senators, the notorious “Keating Five,” were accused of influence peddling for campaign contributions.

McCain survived that scandal, but went on to try to tackle the outsized influence of money in politics with the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act of 2002. While unsuccessful at stemming the influence of money in elections, he helped raise awareness and set the stage for reform efforts to come.

When the Arizona senator ran the first time for GOP nominee for president in 2000, allegations that he has a violent temper became a serious blight on his candidacy.

He would lose the Republican primary to George W. Bush, and over the years begin to mellow. Decades later, there were still flashes of that old McCain anger, but it had lost its earlier intensity. He had bridled one of his worst impulses.

By the end of his Senate career he had become a voice for comity and bipartisanship, not just calling for civility, but setting the example by reaching across the aisle. He was always first to admit he wasn’t perfect, but nonetheless implored his fellow senators to work in good faith with one another. And they respected him for it.

McCain was right (and alone) on Iraq

Perhaps the signal moment of his Senate career – one that required real political courage – was his 2007 argument for continued intervention in Iraq. He stood with George W. Bush calling for the escalation of troops there for a counter-insurgency strategy called  “the surge.”

They were virtually alone. And it seemed to many pure folly.

The United States sent 20,000 additional troops to Iraq to work in tandem with the “Anbar Awakening,” the rise of Iraqi Sunnis in al-Anbar Province. Together they drove back the al-Qaida insurgency in Iraq and wrote the playbook for confronting asymmetric foes in our future.

His judgment was sound (except for Palin)

History will best remember McCain for his 2008 run for president when it was his great misfortune to go up against a political supernova in Barack Obama.

Trailing badly in the polls, McCain threw a Hail Mary in his selection of little-known Sarah Palin, then governor of Alaska, as vice-presidential running mate. In the end, it was clear Palin was not up to the task, nor was she willing to do the work necessary in to raise her game for such high-stakes politics.

An enduring moment in that race came when one of McCain’s supporters told him, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, he’s not — he’s an Arab.”

McCain replied, “No ma’am. He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

John McCain was a man of sturdy good judgment who was most composed when others were losing their minds. As xenophobia took over Arizona’s political landscape, McCain led a “Gang of Eight” in the U.S. Senate in pursuit of humane immigration reform.

He understood that America could not turn its back on modern immigrants any more than it could disavow its immigrant past.

McCain worked tirelessly for his country

McCain served his state and his country with integrity and high distinction. He carried the torch for limited government and American military strength and leadership, and in his final days of service he stood up to his own party’s president for violating not just the values of our nation, but the norms of decency.

There was a moment after McCain had returned home from Washington for what looked like the last time, when journalists began preparing for his imminent resignation. But some who knew him best realized that was foolish. McCain would never resign.   

If you sat down with him to talk issues, it wouldn’t take long before the conversation drifted to sports. And it is there you find the metaphor that best describes McCain:

“He left it all on the field.”

Which is to say, he never quit on us.

This is an opinion of The Arizona Republic’s editorial board. Send us a letter to the editor to weigh in.

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Australia’s Rohan Dennis claimed the leader’s red jersey on the opening stage of the Vuelta a Espana in Malaga.

The BMC Racing rider, 28, won the 8km time trial in nine minutes 39 seconds – six seconds clear of Team Sky’s Michal Kwiatkowski.

Britain’s Simon Yates is 29 seconds off the lead, while his twin brother Adam is 11 seconds further back.

Vincenzo Nibali, who was runner-up to Chris Froome last year and won the race in 2010, also finished 40 seconds down.

Dennis was among the favourites for the stage and also won the stage 16 time trial at this year’s Giro d’Italia.

“That was the first goal – to get a win in the Vuelta, especially after doing what I did in the Giro” he told Eurosport.

“In the end you can only do what you can do and just put everything out there and hope for the win.”

It is the first time in nine years that the Vuelta has begun with an individual time trial.

Nairo Quintana, who won the event in 2016, is 30 seconds behind Dennis, with his Movistar team-mate and 2009 winner Alejandro Valverde in 16th place overall.

Australia’s Richie Porte, who missed Thursday’s team presentation with gastroenteritis, ended the day 51 seconds off the lead.

Ireland’s Dan Martin finished 38 seconds back, one second in front of UAE Team Emirates team-mate and 2015 champion Fabio Aru.

Team Sky rider Tao Geoghegan Hart impressed on his Grand Tour debut, with the 23-year-old coming home 24 seconds down on Dennis.

Fellow Briton Steve Cummings was 29th overall, one place in front of Mitchelton-Scott leader Simon Yates.

Sunday’s second stage sees the first of nine summit finishes, with the race ending in Madrid on 16 September.

Stage one result

1. Rohan Dennis (Aus/BMC Racing Team) Nine minutes 39 seconds

2. Michal Kwiatkowski (Pol/Team Sky) +6secs

3. Victor Campenaerts (Bel/Lotto-Soudal) +7secs

4. Nelson Oliveira (Por/Movistar Team) +17secs

5. Dylan van Baarle (Ned/Team Sky) +20secs

6. Alessandro de Marchi (Ita/BMC Racing Team) +21secs

7. Jonathan Castroviejo (Spa/Team Sky) Same time

8. Simon Geschke (Ger/Team Sunweb)

9. Ion Izagirre (Spa/Bahrain-Merida) +22secs

10. Wilco Kelderman (Ned/Team Sunweb) Same time

Selected

18. Tao Geoghegan Hart (GB/Team Sky) +24sec

29. Steve Cummings (GB/Dimension Data) +29secs

30. Simon Yates (GB/Mitchelton-Scott) Same time

64. Adam Yates (GB/Mitchelton-Scott) +40secs

Image: Evan Vucci/AP/REX/Shutterstock

In Donald Trump’s eyes, anyone who kneels during the National Anthem is a “son of a bitch.” But the 45th U.S. president could apparently use another grade school lesson or two on the American flag.

On Thursday, Trump joined First Lady Melania Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar for a photo opp at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio. During the visit, President Trump spent some time sitting with the kids and coloring. That’s when it happened.

The president added a blue stripe to the American flag.

Azar highlighted the error, presumably unintentionally, when he tweeted out photos from the event. As you can plainly see, the president’s partially finished flag-coloring project sports an unmistakable patch of blue, right where it shouldn’t be.

(It’s the third of these three images, the one on the bottom right.)

While our country’s flag is indeed red, white, and blue, the 13 stripes — which represent the 13 British colonies that declared their independence and became the USA’s first states in 1776 — are only red and white. The blue appears behind the flag’s 50 stars (one for each state!), in the rectangle situated in its top-left corner.

Before any Trump supporters come out of the woodwork to cry foul and suggest that maybe this sheet of paper didn’t belong to the president… there’s another photo that shows him actually adding the blue himself.

On the one hand, anything goes, color-wise, when you’re sitting and coloring with a bunch of little kids. Want to make an orange, green, and purple flag? Go wild. Who cares? It’s happy fun times with kids.

Then again, this is the president who’s been railing against predominantly black athletes in the National Football League for daring to protest police brutality and racial inequality in America during the pre-game performance of the National Anthem. Surely a man who respects the flag and everything it stands for so much should know where the colors go on said flag.

Sarcasm aside, it should be clear to all observers by now: Trump pledges allegiance only to himself. He has no conception of American values, or what actually makes America great (hint: immigration is a big part of it). 

It isn’t even a little bit surprising to learn that the man might not know where the blue goes on the American flag.

<div class="vertical-slide" data-hash="constance-wu-and-henry-golding-crazy-rich-asians" data-slide-index="1" data-headline="Constance Wu and Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians)” readability=”7″>