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Tag Archives: John McCain

What Trump Gets About McCain that Washington and the Media Don’t

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President Trump is relentlessly attacking the late Sen. John McCain. Washington and the press are in an uproar!

Look at this from the Washington Post, ground central for anti-Trumpism and conventional wisdom:

President Trump on Wednesday escalated his unrelenting attacks on the late senator from Arizona and former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who even in death has remained one of Trump’s top targets for abuse as fellow Republicans have repeatedly begged him to stop.

In a five-minute diatribe during an appearance at a General Dynamics tank factory in Lima, Ohio, Trump argued that McCain, a lifelong Pentagon booster and former prisoner of war in Vietnam, “didn’t get the job done” for veterans while also grousing that he did not receive proper gratitude for McCain’s funeral last September.

“I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve,” Trump said inaccurately, an apparent reference to allowing the use of military transport to carry McCain’s body to Washington. “I don’t care about this, I didn’t get a thank-you, that’s okay. We sent him on the way. But I wasn’t a fan of John McCain.” He added, “I have to be honest, I never liked him much. Hasn’t been for me. I’ve really, probably, never will.”

The full-throated repudiation of a deceased and revered member of his party was remarkable even for a president constantly at war with his rivals, and it came amid an outpouring of statements in recent days praising McCain in the face of Trump’s attacks.

Note the part I’ve bolded. The Post is correct in that McCain is deceased. What they don’t understand is that he is not quite a “revered member of his party.”

The Republican base that elected Trump respects McCain’s service. They also recognize that, as moving as McCain’s story is, there are more important things than John McCain. And McCain has repeatedly worked with the left to forward its agenda, whether on immigration or health care.

Far from being “above it all,” McCain showed his personal pique at Trump by voting against ending Obamacare and providing the dossier to prosecutors.

Now who is more irrational, Trump and his supporters, who take McCain’s entire career into account, or Washington insiders and journalists in anoint McCain a saint?

UPDATE: This story was rewritten by the Washington Post.

Video || Trump: “I Was Never a Fan of John McCain, and I Never Will Be”

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President Trump today yet again expressed the frustrations many conservatives have with John McCain.

“I’m very unhappy that he didn’t repeal and replace Obamacare, as you know. He campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years and then they got to a vote and he said thumbs down,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

“So he campaigned, he told us hours before that he was going to repeal and replace. Then, for some reason — I think I understand the reason — he ended up going thumbs up,” he said, apparently meaning to say “thumbs down.”

Unseated GOP Congressman: John McCain Lost the House

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Rep. Jason Lewis, R-Minn., who was defeated in his bid for reelection, has a theory that makes a lot of sense about why Republicans lost the House: John McCain.

According to exit polls, the top issue on people’s minds as they entered the polling stations was health care. That was by design. Democrats waged a massive, national effort to convince voters that if Republicans maintained control of the House, they’d take away the right to get health care regardless of preexisting conditions.

Lewis writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The Republican Party lost its House majority on July 28, 2017, when Sen. John McCain ended the party’s seven-year quest to repeal ObamaCare. House leadership had done an admirable job herding cats. On the second try, we passed the American Health Care Act in May. Then McCain’s inscrutable vote against the Senate’s “skinny repeal” killed the reform effort.

McCain’s last-minute decision prompted a “green wave” of liberal special-interest money, which was used to propagate false claims that the House plan “gutted coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.” That line was the Democrats’ most potent attack in the midterms.

It was endlessly repeated by overt partisans in the media . . . because the AHCA didn’t pass, it was impossible to refute the lies about it.

And since the plan had not passed, it was possible to create fear about the prospect that it would.

McCain will go down as one of the great men of our time because he was palatable to Democrats, at least as long as he wasn’t running for president. And Democrats write history.

His conduct under capitivity during the Vietnam War was heroic. But his career as a senator was marked at times by deep concern for . . . John McCain. His support for campaign finance reform, I believe, was an attempt to revive his reputation after the Keating Five scandal. And his vote against Obamacare repeal was pure vengeance against President Trump, who had insulted him. It was petty, and it harmed the country.

 

Open Thread || Monday, August 27, 2018

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Please leave your comments.

I’d particularly like to hear your thoughts on McCain. I may do an op-ed in another publication on why conservatives did not like McCain – shocking to the MSM! While I’ve seen a lot of interesting takes on McCain in the comment section of the piece below this one, any others you might want to leave in this thread that could help inform the piece – if I do it – would be appreciated.

Keith

Trump Tweets Sympathies to McCain’s Family But Says Nothing Positive About McCain

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President Trump Saturday tweeted his sympathy to the family of Sen. John McCain, who died Saturday at the age of 81, but left out any praise for the late senator himself.

McCain and Trump had long had a contentious relationship. Trump during the campaign questioned McCain’s heroism, and McCain cast the vote that sunk Trump-backed legislation to partially repeal Obamacare. McCain also withdrew his support for Trump late in the 2016 campaign.

McCain No Longer Seeking Medical Treatment

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Sen. John McCain has chosen to discontinue medical treatment, according to a statement released by his family.

The family said:

Last summer, Senator John McCain shared with Americans the news our family already knew: he had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, and the prognosis was serious. In the year since, John has surpassed expectations for his survival. But the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict. With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment.

McCain Undercuts President With Direct Tweet to U.S. Allies

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Sen. John McCain Sunday undercut President Trump with a tweet aimed at allies who are sore that Trump refused to sign the G-7 joint statement

Trump, in fact, is doing exactly the kind of thing he was elected to do.

But McCain knows something about public opinion. It’s what kept him out of the White House and put Trump in it.

Trump Continues to Go After McCain

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President Trump is continuing to assail Sen. John McCain, noting for at least the second time in recent days that McCain’s vote sank the Obamacare repeal effort in Congress.


McCain betrayed Republican voters by not supporting the cause of Obamacare repeal, the exact thing that put Republicans in power and gave him his committee chairmanship. And I believe he did it out of personal animus toward Trump. With McCain, a lot of stuff is personal, even though in death he will be contrasted with Trump as a man of great principle and what the Republican party “should” be compared to Trump.

Of course, those doing the comparisons will be completely unaware of the contempt many conservatives have for McCain, despite his heroism many years ago, for positions he has taken on things like immigration, campaign finance reform, and Obamacare.

“John McCain is leading the fight to stop Obamacare,” a 2016 ad for his reelection campaign proclaimed.

Here is his leadership in action.

Maybe Trump is furious that McCain disinvited him to his funeral. Whatever, the man is close to his deathbed. And he did serve years ago while Trump did not. I often wonder how many people who could have been leaders of our country went to Vietnam, served, and died while others stayed home. Although I have also had veterans of the war tell me they don’t blame people for “staying out of all that shit.”

Either way, it’s time for Trump to leave McCain alone. He’s dying. It’s enough.

No, Kelly Sadler Should Not Resign for Joking About McCain Dying

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A White House staffer, Kelly Sadler, reportedly made a bad joke during a private meeting, something about how John McCain will soon be dead so it doesn’t matter how he votes on President Trump’s CIA nominee, Gina Haspel. Someone went running to the press and word got out. Sadler reportedly did the right thing and… Continue Reading

McCain: Conservative Immigration Stance Driven by “Zealots” and “Kooks”

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I’m sorry he is dying. And he is a great American hero. But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is not a conservative and, from his stance on immigration to his decision to sink the Obamacare repeal effort with his “thumbs down” vote last year, has done damage to the conservative cause over the years. Including by… Continue Reading

McCain Offers Psychotherapy to Hillary

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Sen. John McCain, who shares with Hillary Clinton membership in that exclusive club of losers of presidential elections, is counseling Hillary to accept the tragic death of her political career and move on. From an interview with Esquire: “You’ve got to understand that you can’t rewrite history . . . One of the almost irresistible… Continue Reading