This is typical of a lot of left-wing PR tactics, and people are getting sick of it. Trump is probably as popular as he is, because he's finally hitting back. Note how this post goes: the headline is all about sympathy for the family of a veteran, but inside, not a word about them and their sacrifice, just left-wing agenda stuff. That's how all too many left-wingers operate: rather than make arguments of substance, they hide behind people or groups that are held to be beyond criticism, like dead soldiers, or the cause of black civil rights. Civil rights, to most people, means ensuring that people unjustly denied of their rights as Americans, can vote. But liberals have used that label for all sorts of special privileges for their own base, like abortion, or same-sex marriage. In each of those cases, women and homosexuals were not being denied anything that men and heterosexuals were being permitted, unlike blacks and whites in the real civil rights struggles. It got to the point that Democrats even blocked the nomination of a federal judge who had fought in the actual civil rights movement, who had convicted racists and fought the KKK back when they were dangerous, being the militant arm of the Democratic party, sent his kids to black schools, and needed protection from death threats he earned working for voting rights. And the Democrats blocked him citing his bad civil rights record. Meaning he opposed special privileges for feminists, just as he had opposed special privileges for whites forty years beforehand. But neither the Democrats, nor the media that covered the story bothered to specify, leading people to think he was a racist or something.

The Democrats did the same thing when Bush 2 was running for reelection, with a bunch of 9-11 widows publicly supporting Kerry and attacking Bush, but whenever anyone criticized them or tried to rebut, it was shrieks of outrage that anyone would disrespect their grief.

Note that Trump "insulted" John McCain's "service" fairly early in the campaign, and it really didn't hurt him among the militaristic party, as he went on to win a bunch of primaries and its nomination. Because JOhn McCain was doing the same thing as the left-wing PR - hiding behind his service forty years before, in order to immunize himself from criticism.

The same people who were chivalrously outraged at Republican criticism of the First Lady injecting herself into politics despite her lack of an electoral mandate, or who sneered at Republican prudery for investigating Clinton's history of sexual harassment and rape, are now publishing 20 year old nude photos of Melania Trump on the front pages of major metropolitan newspapers, from before she ever met her husband, or ginning up absurd plagiarism scandals, because she used a handful of cliches that Michelle Obama also deployed in a speech.

If Trump loses, its going to be because he's an empty suit with no real policies or principles. That he hasn't lost so far is because we have moved so far from substantive discussions of politics, and have become so superficial and emotional, that we have turned it into an arena where someone like Trump can thrive.