Veterans hold rally on Capitol Hill calling on GOP to withdraw endorsement of Trump

WASHINGTON - A group of veterans gathered at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday seeking to dump Trump. They are calling on Republicans to withdraw their presidential endorsement of Donald Trump.

The organizers behind this are the liberal-progressive activist group Move On. They claim that this event was strictly non-political because it focused on the opinions of U.S. military veterans. But in reality, there was a whole lot of politics at work here.

On Thursday, a group of former military personnel representing service in the Marines, the Army and the Navy along with ordinary citizens all arrived carrying boxes they said represented 100,000 signatures asking the Republican Party to rescind its endorsement of Trump.

The group cites Trump's recent comments made about the Gold Star family of U.S. Army Capt. Humayan Khan, a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq, questions over Trump's fundraisers for veterans and Trump's comments that John McCain himself is not a war hero because he was captured in Vietnam.

"Donald Trump's reckless ignorance about America's responsibilities in the world shocks me to the core," said U.S. Marine Corps veteran Alexander McCoy.

"When Donald Trump attacks the Khan family, he attacks all military families," said Crystal Kravens, a U.S. Army veteran.

"Please be courageous and brave as you have been in the past and please rescind your endorsement of Donald Trump," said Navy veteran Jim Lyons.

But it turns out there was a little stage craft at work in all of this. The so-called boxes full of petition signatures were actually completely empty when we checked them out. The organizers later explained the signatures had been placed onto a hard drive, which was brought to Sen. McCain's office on Thursday even though the Senate is in recess.

While they had lots to say about Trump, they got tightlipped when asked about Hillary Clinton. Despite Clinton having voted in favor of the war in Iraq, being Secretary of State during the beginnings of ISIS, her handling of the Benghazi embassy attack and the mishandling of classified emails, this group, who had no registered Republicans among them, refused to say if they would endorse her or say how she would do as commander-in-chief.