Donald Trump received loud cheers when he told a crowd in Las Vegas Thursday that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl "should have been executed" for leaving his post in southeastern Afghanistan.
"We're tired of Sgt. Bergdahl, who's a traitor, a no-good traitor," he told an audience of more than 1,500 people at the Treasure Island hotel-casino. "Thirty years ago, he would have been shot."
Bergdahl has been accused of leaving his post in Afghanistan in July 2009, and was charged in March with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy; he was a prisoner of the Taliban for five years, and was ultimately released in an exchange for five Taliban commanders in U.S. custody. A hearing was held in his case earlier this month, and Bergdahl's attorney, Eugene Fidell, said in a statement Trump "has become a broken record on this subject. If he took the time to study what actually emerged at the preliminary hearing he would be singing a different tune."
During his hour-long speech, Trump also took credit for Kevin McCarthy dropping out of the House speaker's race and brought a woman onstage who said she was a legal Colombian immigrant who planned to vote for Trump, her "No. 1 person in the United States."