JFK vs. Donald Trump

By Steve Schmidt - Dec 21, 2025. Substack

George Ross lost his life for a cause that he believed in stronger than any one of us, because he was an idealist in the purest sense.

Jack Kennedy, the Ambassador’s son, was on the same boat and also lost his life. The man that said the cream of a nation is lost in war can never be accused of making an overstatement of a very cruel fact…

From a letter written by an officer to his mother following the service for 13 men, including John F. Kennedy, who were believed to have been killed at sea

John Kennedy’s first funeral was a memorial service on a South Pacific island at a torpedo boat squadron that watched PT 109 explode on a moonless August 2, 1943.

This is a long piece that I hope you will read if you don’t already know the details of the story I’m going to share.

It is about President John F. Kennedy, the antithesis of the felon Donald Trump. I’m writing for my friend Maria, JFK’s niece, who was rightly down and dismayed by the atrocious idiocy on display by Donald Trump this week.

When it comes to the desecrated Kennedy Center perhaps it is part of what Frederick Douglass referred to as a “necessitous link” in an entwinement of events moving towards an outcome that can’t be seen clearly at this moment, but will become crystal clear in due time.

Donald Trump is an outrage pimp. His blasphemies are too numerous to easily document this morning, but the appalling affront committed by him and his stooges is about so much more than letters on a building in Washington, DC.

It is about honor.

Honor is a big concept, and it requires many virtues to be sustained during testing.

Trump has no honor. None.

President Kennedy’s wisdom is badly needed in this moment. Perhaps the effect of Trump’s apostasy will have the impact of rekindling memories, and stirring the idealism of a new generation who don’t know him, but should.

Trump is a divider and a hater.

JFK was a uniter.

Donald Trump is the lowest of low men. The placement of his name above President Kennedy’s on the Kennedy Center isn’t just a desecration, but an aggression against the American people who have given him no such license because he has earned no such honor.

The Kennedy Center doesn’t belong to MAGA or Trump.

It belongs to the American people, just like the White House, the planes, helicopters and all the toys.

Donald Trump placing his name above John Kennedy’s is an obscene act of public masturbation.

Mark my words: Donald Trump will never have a presidential library of any type, and he will be accorded no state honors at death.

Donald Trump will not lie draped under an American flag under the Capitol Dome in the building that his thugs attacked.

Trump will die in disgrace, a laughingstock and national catastrophe, the worst president in American history.

All Trump has done at the Kennedy Center is show how weak and afraid he truly is deep inside.

Trump could never measure up in comparison to John Kennedy.

Donald Trump said avoiding STDs at Studio 54 was his “personal Vietnam.” When a veteran gave Trump his Purple Heart medal in 2016, Trump said, “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.”

John Kennedy earned his a different way.

Let’s examine a real event, and imagine how Donald would have measured up.

All of the excerpts below are from a New Yorker story that was published on June 10, 1944, by John Hersey, who came across Lt. Kennedy in the Solomon Islands. He asked if he could share JFK’s story of what had happened to PT 109, a boat too small to have a name, but big enough to get a number. Lt. Kennedy suggested that the writer talk to the men who survived an ordeal Donald Trump could not have endured for 15 seconds.

When the story was published JFK had already lost his older brother, who was killed in action on a bomber mission over England.

The record of service and sacrifice to the United States by the children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, which includes Eunice Shriver, is astounding.

One brother was killed in combat, while another was grievously wounded. Two brothers were assassinated — one as president and the other as the Democratic frontrunner in 1968. Three served as United States senators.

Lets’s take a step back in time — 82 years to be exact. Two men were bleeding on a beach, crippled by wounds.

Kennedy and Ross were wakened early in the morning by a noise. They looked up and saw four husky natives. One walked up to them and said in an excellent English accent, “I have a letter for you, sir.”

Kennedy tore the note open. It said, “On His Majesty’s Service. To the Senior Officer, Nauru Island.

I have just learned of your presence on Nauru Is.

I am in command of a New Zealand infantry patrol operating in conjunction with U. S. Army troops on New Georgia. I strongly advise that you come with these natives to me.

Meanwhile I shall be in radio communication with your authorities at Rendova, and we can finalize plans to collect balance of your party. Lt. Wincote. P. S. Will warn aviation of your crossing Ferguson Passage.

When has Trump ever put himself in harm’s way for a cause beyond his self-interest?

Sometimes stories that were widely known just seem to disappear. Time does that to many things. It erodes memory and connection.

Sometimes I wonder if that is the reason why Ronald Reagan talked so often about freedom only ever being one generation away from being gone. Both John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan talked about America as “a shining city on the hill,” a scriptural reference used by John Winthrop, who arrived in America on the Arabella in 1630, and led the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

All three men would have reviled Trump.

Let’s get back to the South Pacific.

How did the natives have a letter, and know where to find the ship-wrecked American survivors of PT 109?

Good question.

They got the message that JFK carved on a coconut.

Before getting on with the story try to guess who Trump would be in this next part…

Again, Kennedy took McMahon in tow with the strap in his teeth, and the nine others grouped themselves around the timber.

This swim took three hours.

The nine around the timber were caught by the current and barely made the far tip of the island.

Kennedy found walking the quarter mile across to them much harder than the three-hour swim.

The cuts on his bare feet were festered and looked like small balloons.

The men were suffering most from thirst, and they broke open some coconuts lying on the ground and avidly drank the milk.

Kennedy and McMahon, the first to drink, were sickened, and Thom told the others to drink sparingly.

In the middle of the night it rained, and someone suggested moving into the underbrush and licking water off the leaves.

Ross and McMahon kept contact at first by touching feet as they licked.

Somehow they got separated, and, being uncertain whether there were any Japs on the island, they became frightened. McMahon, trying to make his way back to the beach, bumped into someone and froze.

It turned out to be Johnston, licking leaves on his own. In the morning the group saw that all the leaves were covered with droppings. Bitterly, they named the place Bird Island.

On this fourth day, the men were low. Even Johnston was low.

He had changed his mind about praying. McGuire had a rosary around his neck, and Johnston said, “McGuire, give that necklace a working over.” McGuire said quietly, “Yes, I’ll take care of all you fellows.”

Kennedy was still unwilling to admit that things were hopeless.

He asked Ross if he would swim with him to an island called Nauru, to the southeast and even nearer Ferguson Passage. They were very weak indeed by now, but after an hour’s swim they made it.

They walked painfully across Nauru to the Ferguson Passage side, where they saw a Japanese barge aground on the reef. There were two men by the barge—possibly Japs.

They apparently spotted Kennedy and Ross, for they got into a dugout canoe and hurriedly paddled to the other side of the island.

Kennedy and Ross moved up the beach. They came upon an unopened rope-bound box and, back in the trees, a little shelter containing a keg of water, a Japanese gas mask, and a crude wooden fetish shaped like a fish.

There were Japanese hardtack and candy in the box and the two had a wary feast.

Down by the water they found a one-man canoe. They hid from imagined Japs all day. When night fell, Kennedy left Ross and took the canoe, with some hardtack and a can of water from the keg, out into Ferguson Passage.

But no PT’s came, so he paddled to Bird Island.

The men there told him that the two men he had spotted by the barge that morning were natives, who had paddled to Bird Island.

The natives had said that there were Japs on Nauru and the men had given Kennedy and Ross up for lost.

Then the natives had gone away.

Kennedy gave out small rations of crackers and water, and the men went to sleep.

During the night, one man, who kept himself awake until the rest were asleep, drank all the water in the can Kennedy had brought back. In the morning the others figured out that he was the guilty one. They swore at him and found it hard to forgive him.

There have always been men like Trump and Hegseth. They are called Blue Falcons in the military…

Before dawn, Kennedy started out in the canoe to rejoin Ross on Nauru, but when day broke a wind arose and the canoe was swamped…

Some natives appeared from nowhere in a canoe, rescued Kennedy, and took him to Nauru.

There they showed him where a two-man canoe was cached. Kennedy picked up a coconut with a smooth shell and scratched a message on it with a jackknife: “ELEVEN ALIVE NATIVE KNOWS POSIT AND REEFS NAURU ISLAND KENNEDY.”

Then he said to the natives, “Rendova, Rendova.”

“Epstein Island! Epstein Island!” is how I imagine Donald’s delusions steering him when he tries to compare himself to JFK. My question is who would Donald tow in a life jacket by the teeth?

Certainly it wouldn’t be Elise Stefanik.

What about Melania? Marla? Epstein? Ghislaine?

What about Bondi? Noem? Patel? Leavitt? Bovino? Homan? Kushner? Eric? Junior?

ANYBODY?

What about the American farmer? What about the American teacher, cop, fireman?

There is nobody.

Why were John Kennedy’s feet so painfully cut up?

Can you imagine Trump in the water in command with 11 survivors and two men missing?

When day broke, the men on the remains of the 109 stirred and looked around.

To the northeast, three miles off, they saw the monumental cone of Kolombangara; there, the men knew, ten thousand Japanese swarmed.

To the west, five miles away, they saw Vella Lavella; more Japs.

To the south, only a mile or so away, they actually could see a Japanese camp on Gizo. Kennedy ordered his men to keep as low as possible, so that no moving silhouettes would show against the sky.

The listing hulk was gurgling and gradually settling….

When the sun had passed the meridian, Kennedy said, “We will swim to that small island,” pointing to one of a group three miles to the southeast. “We have less chance of making it than some of these other islands here, but there’ll be less chance of Japs, too.”

Those who could not swim well grouped themselves around a long two-by-six timber with which carpenters had braced the 37-millimetre cannon on deck and which had been knocked overboard by the force of the collision.

They tied several pairs of shoes to the timber, as well as the ship’s lantern, wrapped in a life jacket to keep it afloat. Thom took charge of this unwieldy group.

Kennedy took McMahon in tow again. He cut loose one end of a long strap on McMahon’s Mae West and took the end in his teeth.

He swam breast stroke, pulling the helpless McMahon along on his back.

It took over five hours to reach the island. Water lapped into Kennedy’s mouth through his clenched teeth, and he swallowed a lot.

The salt water cut into McMahon’s awful burns, but he did not complain.

Every few minutes, when Kennedy stopped to rest, taking the strap out of his mouth and holding it in his hand, McMahon would simply say, “How far do we have to go?”

Kennedy would reply, “We’re going good.” Then he would ask, “How do you feel, Mac?”

McMahon always answered, “I’m O.K., Mr. Kennedy. How about you?”

In spite of his burden, Kennedy beat the other men to the reef that surrounded the island. He left McMahon on the reef and told him to keep low, so as not to be spotted by Japs.

Kennedy went ahead and explored the island.

It was only a hundred yards in diameter; coconuts on the trees but none on the ground; no visible Japs.

Just as the others reached the island, one of them spotted a Japanese barge chugging along close to shore.

They all lay low.

The barge went on. Johnston, who was very pale and weak and who was still coughing a lot, said, “They wouldn’t come here. What’d they be walking around here for?

It’s too small.”

Kennedy lay in some bushes, exhausted by his effort, his stomach heavy with the water he had swallowed.

He had been in the sea, except for short intervals on the hulk, for fifteen and a half hours.

Now he started thinking.

Every night for several nights the, PT’s had cut through Ferguson Passage on their way to action.

Ferguson Passage was just beyond the next little island. Maybe . . .

He stood up.

He took one of the pairs of shoes.

He put one of the rubber life belts around his waist.

He hung the .38 around his neck on a lanyard.

He took his pants off.

He picked up the ship’s lantern, a heavy battery affair ten inches by ten inches, still wrapped in the kapok jacket.

He said, “If I find a boat, I’ll flash the lantern twice.

The password will be ‘Roger,’ the answer will be ‘Willco.’ ”

He walked toward the water. After fifteen paces he was dizzy, but in the water he felt all right….

Now it was dark. Kennedy blundered along the uneven reef in water up to his waist.

Sometimes he would reach forward with his leg and cut one of his shins or ankles on sharp coral.

Other times he would step forward onto emptiness.

He made his way like a slow-motion drunk, hugging the lantern.

At about nine o’clock he came to the end of the reef, alongside Ferguson Passage.

He took his shoes off and tied them to the life jacket, then struck out into open water. He swam about an hour, until he felt he was far enough out to intercept the PT’s.

Treading water; he listened for the muffled roar of motors, getting chilled, waiting, holding the lamp.

Once he looked west and saw flares and the false gaiety of an action.

The lights were far beyond the little islands, even beyond Gizo, ten miles away. Kennedy realized that the PT boats had chosen, for the first night in many, to go around Gizo instead of through Ferguson Passage.

There was no hope.

He started back.

He made the same painful promenade of the reef and struck out for the tiny island where his friends were.

But this swim was different.

He was very tired and now the current was running fast, carrying him to the right.

He saw that he could not make the island, so he flashed the light once and shouted “Roger! Roger!” to identify himself… .

Now let’s get to the heart of the matter. Donald Trump said that he doesn’t like American pilots who get shot down, so the lord only knows his antipathy for sailors who wind up in the sea. After all, Donald doesn’t look like much of a swimmer.

Now we do know that the incompetent and immoral drunkard, credibly accused rapist and reportedly abusive spouse Pete Hegseth, a Christian nationalist freak show, with a pastor who believes women shouldn’t vote and slavery is good, has declared the right of the United States to murder on the high seas, and to execute any survivors from shipwrecks.

The irony of having a shipwreck survivor from naval combat in the Pacific being disrespected by a war criminal, who claims the right to do what the United States tried and hung German and Japanese commanders for doing is quite a thing.

Let’s talk about the sinking of PT 109, which Donald Trump and warrior Pete no doubt blame on JFK.

It seems that Kennedy’s PT was out one night with a squadron patrolling Blackett Strait, in mid-Solomons.

Blackett Strait is a patch of water bounded on the northeast by the volcano called Kolombangara, on the west by the island of Vella Lavella, on the south by the Island of Gizo and a string of coral-fringed islets, and on the east by the bulk of New Georgia.

The boats were working about forty miles away from their base on the island of Rendova, on the south side of New Georgia.

They had entered Blackett Strait, as was their habit, through Ferguson Passage, between the coral islets and New Georgia.

The night was a starless black and Japanese destroyers were around.

It was about two-thirty.

The 109, with three officers and ten enlisted men aboard, was leading three boats on a sweep for a target.

An officer named George Ross was up on the bow, magnifying the void with binoculars. Kennedy was at the wheel and he saw Ross turn and point into the darkness.

The man in the forward machine-gun turret shouted, “Ship at two o’clock!”

Kennedy saw a shape and spun the wheel to turn for an attack, but the 109 answered sluggishly.

She was running slowly on only one of her three engines, so as to make a minimum wake and avoid detection from the air.

The shape became a Japanese destroyer, cutting through the night at forty knots and heading straight for the 109.

The thirteen men on the PT hardly had time to brace themselves.

Those who saw the Japanese ship coming were paralyzed by fear in a curious way: they could move their hands but not their feet.

Kennedy whirled the wheel to the left, but again the 109 did not respond.

Ross went through the gallant but futile motions of slamming a shell into the breach of the 37-millimetre anti-tank gun which had been temporarily mounted that very day, wheels and all, on the foredeck.

The urge to bolt and dive over the side was terribly strong, but still no one was able to move; all hands froze to their battle stations.

Then the Japanese crashed into the 109 and cut her right in two.

The sharp enemy forefoot struck the PT on the starboard side about fifteen feet from the bow and crunched diagonally across with a racking noise.

The PT’s wooden hull hardly even delayed the destroyer.

Kennedy was thrown hard to the left in the cockpit, and he thought, “This is how it feels to be killed.”

In a moment he found himself on his back on the deck, looking up at the destroyer as it passed through his boat.

There was another loud noise and a huge flash of yellow-red light, and the destroyer glowed.

Its peculiar, raked, inverted-Y stack stood out in the brilliant light and, later, in Kennedy’s memory…. .

Kennedy’s half of the PT stayed afloat. The bulkheads were sealed, so the undamaged watertight compartments up forward kept the half hull floating.

The destroyer rushed off into the dark. There was an awful quiet: only the sound of gasoline burning.

Kennedy shouted, “Who’s aboard?”

Feeble answers came from three of the enlisted men, McGuire, Mauer, and Albert; and from one of the officers, Thom.

Kennedy saw the fire only ten feet from the boat.

He thought it might reach her and explode the remaining gas tanks, so he shouted, “Over the side!”

The five men slid into the water.

But the wake of the destroyer swept the fire away from the PT, so after a few minutes, Kennedy and the others crawled back aboard. Kennedy shouted for survivors in the water.

One by one they answered: Ross, the third officer; Harris, McMahon, Johnston, Zinsser, Starkey, enlisted men.

Two did not answer: Kirksey and Marney, enlisted men. Since the last bombing at base, Kirksey had been sure he would die.

He had huddled at his battle station by the fantail gun, with his kapok life jacket tied tight up to his cheeks.

No one knows what happened to him or to Marney.

Harris shouted from the darkness, “Mr. Kennedy! Mr. Kennedy! McMahon is badly hurt.”

Kennedy took his shoes, his shirt, and his sidearms off, told Mauer to blink a light so that the men in the water would know where the half hull was, then dived in and swam toward the voice.

The survivors were widely scattered.

McMahon and Harris were a hundred yards away.

When Kennedy reached McMahon, he asked, “How are you, Mac?”

McMahon said, “I’m all right. I’m kind of burnt.”

Kennedy shouted out, “How are the others?”

Harris said softly, “I hurt my leg.”

Kennedy, who had been on the Harvard swimming team five years before, took McMahon in tow and headed for the PT.

A gentle breeze kept blowing the boat away from the swimmers. It took forty-five minutes to make what had been an easy hundred yards.

On the way in, Harris said, “I can’t go any farther.”

Kennedy, of the Boston Kennedys, said to Harris, of the same home town, “For a guy from Boston, you’re certainly putting up a great exhibition out here, Harris.”

Harris made it all right and didn’t complain any more.

Then Kennedy swam from man to man, to see how they were doing.

All who had survived the crash were able to stay afloat, since they were wearing life preservers—kapok jackets shaped like overstuffed vests, aviators’ yellow Mae Wests, or air-filled belts like small inner tubes.

But those who couldn’t swim had to be towed back to the wreckage by those who could.

One of the men screamed for help.

When Ross reached him, he found that the screaming man had two life jackets on. Johnston was treading water in a film of gasoline which did not catch fire.

The fumes filled his lungs and he fainted. Thom towed him in. The others got in under their own power. It was now after 5 a.m., but still dark.

It had taken nearly three hours to get everyone aboard.

You can read the full account here.

John Kennedy would swear the presidential oath exactly 6,381 days after this New Yorker story was published.

Before he left Massachusetts as President-Elect he gave a speech to the Massachusetts legislature, which is recalled as the Arabella speech because he talks about the importance of “the shining city on the hill,” and contemplates its meaning for the challenges of 1960 America.

When JFK delivered the Arabella speech he laid out a four-part test that Trump and every single person who works with him and for him fails each day.

Failing the test means failing the country. That, in the end, is the difference between Trump and JFK.

Trump is the greatest failure in American history, and JFK was ever faithful to America.

Here was the test:

I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arabella 331 years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a new and perilous frontier.

“We must always consider,” he said, “that we shall be as a city upon a hill-the eyes of all people are upon us.”

Today, the eyes of all people are truly upon us-and our Government, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill- constructed and inhabited by men aware of their grave trust and their great responsibilities.

For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arabella in 1630.

We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it then was by terror without and disorder within.

History will not judge our endeavors—and a government cannot be selected-merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation.

Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these.

For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us - recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions:

First, were we truly men of courage—with the courage to stand up to one’s enemies— and the courage to stand up, when necessary to one’s own associates the courage to resist public pressure as well as private greed?

Secondly, were we truly men of judgment- with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past ―of our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others- with enough wisdom to know what we did not know, and enough candor to admit it?

Third, were we truly men of integrity-men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them- men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust?

Finally, were we truly men of dedication-with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest?

Donald Trump is something, but he’s no John Kennedy. Letters on a building don’t change Trump into something that he will never be, which is an American giant.

Trump is a microscopic man. There will be nothing named for him that endures.

Nothing.

The letters on the Kennedy Center are sandcastles on the beach.

We will wash them away because the American people will be the cleansing tide.