As the presidential candidates defend John McCain and other US veterans, the 2004 attacks on secretary of state’s war record tells another story

Donald Trump’s controversial remarks about Arizona senator John McCain’s service in Vietnam have drawn parallels with attacks on John Kerry in 2004 when the current secretary of state was the Democratic nominee for president. But they’ve drawn very different reactions from Republican candidates for president.

Trump’s jibe on Saturday that McCain’s “not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured” drew a firestorm of condemnation from fellow Republicans. In particular, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former Texas governor Rick Perry have condemned Trump’s comments.

On Twitter, Bush denounced Trump’s statement as “a slanderous attack” and added that McCain “and all our veterans – particularly POWs – have earned our respect and admiration.” The former Florida governor has long been in a war of words with Trump and condemned the real estate mogul’s “rhetoric of divisiveness” at an event in Iowa last week.

Perry said on Saturday at the Family Leadership Summit, the same venue where Trump made his remarks, “I was highly offended about what Donald Trump said about [McCain’s] years of sacrifice in a dirty, dingy, terrible prison in North Vietnam. Donald Trump owes every American veteran and, in particular, John McCain an apology.” His campaign had already called on Trump to withdraw from the race and Perry had previously said Trump’s ideology was “a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense.”

Yet, when a well-funded group ran advertisements slamming John Kerry’s war record in 2004, both Bush and Perry took very different stances.

During that campaign, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, heavily funded by a major Rick Perry donor and aiming to aid the re-election campaign of Jeb Bush’s brother, spent millions of dollars in ads that claimed Kerry, a decorated veteran who was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts while serving in Vietnam, was lying about his war record. Kerry was also criticised for protesting against the war after he returned to the United States, where he served as a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Both Bush and Perry refused to speak out against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad in 2004. In a radio interview with Sean Hannity, Bush said that he didn’t think the group’s attack on Kerry was “a smear.” He added “In fact, what ought to happen is, there ought to be fact checks. Every ad that goes out ought to be looked at by the press in an objective way and people can make their own determination whether they’re accurate or not.”

Bush also sent a letter to Bud Day, a Medal of Honor-winning POW who was a leader of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, praising his role in the organisation. In 2005, the then Florida governor wrote to Day of the group, “As someone who truly understands the risk of standing up for something, I simply cannot express in words how much I value their willingness to stand up against John Kerry.”

Tim Miller, a Bush spokesman, said there was “no comparison” between the two situations. Miller also noted of the letter “commending Col. Bud Day, a Medal of Honor and Air Force Cross recipient, twice captured as a POW is not in any way analogous to condemning Donald Trump’s slanderous attack on John McCain.”

Perry took a similar tone in 2004. “I think that there’s a lot of questions,” the then Texas governor told the AP at the time. “I’m all about everybody laying their records out and I think President Bush has done that,” said Perry. “Mr Kerry needs to do that. You lay your records out and then people can run all the ads they want.” The Perry campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.

However, one current GOP presidential candidate did take a strong stance on the controversial 2004 ads. At the time, then Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee told the AP, “as far as I am concerned, John Kerry did honourably serve in Vietnam. I have no reason to doubt it. I wasn’t there. I don’t know. We make a huge mistake if we want to challenge that part of his life.” The Arkansas Republican did express concern about some of Kerry’s activities as war protestor.

But the strongest condemnation of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth from within the GOP came from John McCain himself. At the time, when the group released their first commercial, he told ABC, “I condemn the ad, it is dishonest and dishonourable, I think it is very, very wrong. I hope that the president will also condemn it.”