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Since July 2015, Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. President from 2017 to 2021, has made a series of controversial public statements, criticizing late U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona. Trump's comments regarding McCain have drawn backlash from numerous members of the Republican Party, including Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, Mitch McConnell, Johnny Isakson, Martha McSally, and others. [1] [2] Trump's remarks on McCain have also drawn backlash from McCain's family, including Meghan McCain, [3] [4] as well as from Democratic figures such as Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and others. [5] [6] [7]
Former U.S. President Donald Trump has made several controversial public statements since 2015 about late U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona. Trump has made comments regarding and questioning McCain's military service as a naval aviator in the United States Navy during Operation Rolling Thunder in the Vietnam War, in which McCain was shot down over Hanoi and remained a prisoner of war from 1967 to 1973. [8]
On July 18, 2015, Trump appeared at The Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, just one month after he announced his campaign for president on June 16 of that same year. In a one-on-one interview with CBS pollster Frank Luntz, Trump was asked about the naval service of then–U.S. senator from Arizona John McCain, in which Trump responded:
"Frank: (00:01)
John McCain, a war hero, five and a half years as a POW, and you call him a dummy. Is that appropriate in running for president?
Donald Trump: (00:11)
Okay. Let’s. You got to let me speak though Frank because you interrupt all the time, okay? No, I know him too well, that’s the problem. Let’s take John McCain. I’m in Phoenix. We have a meeting that is going to have 500 people at the Biltmore Hotel. We get a call from the hotel, it’s turmoil. Thousands and thousands of people showing up three, four days before, they’re pitching tents on the hotel grass. The hotel says, “We can’t handle this. It’s going to destroy the hotel.” We move it to the convention center. We have 15,000 people, John, the biggest one ever bigger than Bernie Sanders, bigger than… 15,000 people showed up to hear me speak, bigger than anybody, and everybody knows it.
Donald Trump: (00:53)
A beautiful day with incredible people that were wonderful great Americans, I will tell you. John McCain goes up, “Oh boy, Trump makes my life difficult. He had 15,000 crazies show up.” Crazies, he called them all crazy. I said, “They weren’t crazy. They were great Americans.” These people, if you would have seen these people… I know what a crazy is. I know all about crazies, these weren’t crazies. So he insulted me and he insulted everybody in that room. And I said, “Somebody should run against John McCain who has been, in my opinion, not so hot.” And I supported him, I supported him for president. I raised a million dollars for him. It’s a lot of money. I supported him. He lost, he let us down. He lost. So I’d never liked him as much after that because I don’t like losers. But Frank, Frank, let me get to it. He hit me.
Frank: (01:43)
He’s a war hero.
Donald Trump: (01:44)
He’s not a war hero.
Frank: (01:46)
He’s a war hero.
Donald Trump: (01:46)
He’s a war hero-
Frank: (01:46)
Five and a half years in a prison camp.
Donald Trump: (01:46)
He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, okay? I hate to tell you.
Frank: (01:52)
Do you agree with that?
Donald Trump: (01:52)
He’s a war hero because he was captured, okay? And I believe perhaps he’s a war hero, but right now he said some very bad things about a lot of people. So what I said is John McCain, I disagree with him that these people aren’t crazy. And very importantly, and I speak the truth, he graduated last in his class at Annapolis. So I said, nobody knows that. I said he graduated last or second to last. He graduated last in his class at Annapolis and he was upset. I said, “Why? For telling the truth?” See, you’re not supposed to say that somebody graduated last or second to last in their class. Because you’re supposed to be like, Frank says, very nice. Folks, I want to make America great again. We want to get down to brass tacks. We don’t want to listen to his stuff with being politically correct and everything else. We have a lot of work to do." [9] [10]
I said he graduated last, or second to last, he graduated last in his class at Annapolis, and he was upset. I said, "Why? For telling the truth?" [1]
Following the Leadership Summit incident, a 1999 interview between Trump and Dan Rather on 60 Minutes began to appear on Twitter, YouTube, and other social media. During the interview, Trump was asked about McCain's military service, in which Trump responded:
He was captured. Does being captured make you a hero? I don't know. I'm not sure. [11]
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump The very foul mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!
October 11, 2016 [12]
Following Trump's controversial statements during the Leadership Summit incident in July 2015, McCain announced in April 2016 that he would not attend the Republican National Convention in July that same year after Trump received the Republican nomination for president. [13] However, McCain stated that despite Trump's statements, he would still vote for Trump, citing, "because I'm a proud Republican and I support the Republican party." [11]
However, following the release of the Access Hollywood tape on October 7, 2016, just one month before the election, McCain announced that he was withdrawing his vote and support for Trump, stating:
Donald Trump’s behavior this week, concluding with the disclosure of his demeaning comments about women and his boasts about sexual assaults, make it impossible to continue to offer even conditional support for his candidacy. [11]
On August 25, 2018, McCain died due to complications from Glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, which McCain had been battling on and off since his diagnosis in July 2017. [14] Many close friends of McCain cited that he did not want then–president Trump attending his funeral, which was scheduled to be held in September 2018. [15]
According to a September 2020 article in The Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg, following McCain's death in August 2018, Trump, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the event, allegedly told his senior staff:
We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral. [16]
The article also goes on to suggest that Trump became furious when he saw flags lowered to half-staff in honor of McCain, telling his aides:
What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser. [16]
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier "is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain." Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel. He had far worse "stains" than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!
March 16, 2019 [17]
On March 16, 2019, roughly seven months after McCain's death, Trump criticized McCain on Twitter for his "thumbs down" vote which prevented the 2017 repeal of the Affordable Care Act, while quoting Ken Starr. [18] The next day, on March 17, Trump promoted a conspiracy theory on Twitter suggesting that McCain's decision to send the Steele dossier to the Federal Bureau of Investigation was a collusion with the Democratic Party to attack him personally. [11]
On March 19, 2019, while meeting in the Oval Office with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, and just two days after his controversial tweets regarding McCain were posted, Trump was questioned by reporters about his recent criticisms of McCain, despite his passing. Trump responded, stating:
I never was a fan of John McCain, and I never will be. [19]
On March 20, 2019, Trump made a series of extremely controversial statements regarding McCain at a U.S. Army tank manufacturing facility, the Joint Systems Manufacturer, in Lima, Ohio. Trump proclaimed that the McCain family never thanked him for McCain's funeral, and further expressed his apathy towards the deceased senator, stating:
I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don't care about this. I didn't get [a] thank you. That's OK. We sent him on the way, but I wasn't a fan of John McCain. [20]
In the 2024 Republican Presidential primary, former President Trump criticized Senator McCain's support of the Affordable Care Act declaring: "You know, without John McCain, we would have had it done. But John McCain, for some reason, couldn't get his arm up," Trump said, apparently mocking McCain's choice in 2017 to vote against a Republican-led bill to repeal Obamacare. [21] Megan McCain, Senator McCain's daughter, responded on social media on the X platform: "My dad was an American hero. An icon. A patriot that will be remembered throughout history," going on to call Trump an "election denying, huckster." [22]
John Sidney McCain III was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a U.S. senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the Republican Party's nominee in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Joseph Isadore Lieberman was an American politician and lawyer who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for vice president of the United States in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. During his final term in office, he was officially listed as an Independent Democrat and caucused with and chaired committees for the Democratic Party.
William Kristol is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine The Weekly Standard. Kristol is now editor-at-large of the center-right publication The Bulwark and has been the host of Conversations with Bill Kristol, an interview web program, since 2014.
Lindsey Olin Graham is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, Graham chaired the Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 2019 to 2021.
Frank Ian Luntz is an American political and communications consultant and pollster, best known for developing talking points and other messaging for Republican causes. His work has included assistance with messaging for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and public relations support for The Israel Project. He advocated use of vocabulary crafted to produce a desired effect, including use of the term death tax instead of estate tax, and climate change instead of global warming.
John McCain ran for U.S. president in the 2000 presidential election, but failed to gain the Republican Party nomination, losing to George W. Bush in a campaign that included a bitter battle during the South Carolina primary. He resumed his role representing Arizona in the U.S. Senate in 2001, and Bush won the election. Bush was President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. McCain won re-election to the Senate in 2004, 2010 and 2016.
Senator John McCain's personal character has dominated the image and perception of him. His family's military heritage, his rebellious nature as a youth, his endurance over his treatment as a prisoner of war, his resulting physical limitations, his political persona, his well-known temper, his admitted propensity for controversial or ill-advised remarks, and his devotion to maintaining his large blended family have all defined his place in the American political world more than any ideological or partisan framing.
John Weaver is an American political consultant. He worked on the John McCain presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2008. In between, he worked for a time for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He was also the chief strategist for the 2016 presidential campaign of Republican John Kasich.
Senator John McCain, the Republican Party nominee, was endorsed or supported by some members of the Democratic Party and by some political figures holding liberal views in the 2008 United States presidential election. McCain Democrat and McCainocrat are terms applied to Democrats who supported McCain.
Stephen Edward Schmidt is an American political and corporate strategist. He is best known for working on Republican political campaigns, including those of President George W. Bush, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arizona Senator John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign.
Kelli Ward is an American politician who served as the chair of the Arizona Republican Party from 2019 to 2023. She previously served in the Arizona State Senate from 2013 to 2015.
Lindsey Graham, the senior United States senator from South Carolina and former U.S. Representative for South Carolina's 3rd congressional district, announced his bid for the Republican nomination for president on June 1, 2015, at an event in his hometown of Central, South Carolina. Although he was praised for solid, often humorous debate performances, the campaign never gained any traction, and was suspended on December 21, 2015.
The 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump was formally launched on June 16, 2015, at Trump Tower in New York City. Trump was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election, having won the most state primaries, caucuses, and delegates at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He chose Mike Pence, the sitting governor of Indiana, as his vice presidential running mate. On November 8, 2016, Trump and Pence were elected president and vice president of the United States. Trump's populist positions in opposition to illegal immigration and various trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, earned him support especially among voters who were male, white, blue-collar, working class, and those without college degrees. Many voters in the Rust Belt, who gave Trump the electoral votes needed to win the presidency, switched from supporting Bernie Sanders to Trump after Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination.
Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan was a United States Army officer who was killed by a suicide attack near Baqubah, Iraq during the Iraq War. He came to national attention in the United States during the 2016 presidential campaign as an example of a Muslim American soldier who died in service to the U.S. military.
Khizr Muazzam Khan and Ghazala Khan are the Pakistani American parents of United States Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in 2004 during the Iraq War. The couple received international attention following a speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention that criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations is a 2018 book by American politician John McCain and his frequent collaborator and former staff member Mark Salter. It is a personal memoir looking at McCain's last ten years or so in the Senate, and his 2008 campaign for the presidency against Barack Obama. As such it is the final volume of an autobiographical trilogy that also comprises Faith of My Fathers (1999) and Worth the Fighting For (2002). It also covers his work on behalf of democracy and human rights in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The work's title comes from the second line of the naval hymn "Eternal Father, Strong to Save", reflecting McCain's career as a naval aviator. It contains 10 chapters including Arab Spring and Regular order.
Former U.S. representative Joe Walsh's campaign for President of the United States in the 2020 election began on August 25, 2019, when he announced his candidacy during an interview on ABC's show This Week, concurrently with the release of a video and a tweet. Walsh was challenging incumbent Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, along with former Governor of Massachusetts Bill Weld. Walsh had been a strong supporter of Trump's during the 2016 election but had gradually become disenchanted with the President, describing him as "morally unfit". In view of Trump's high popularity among Republicans and Walsh's own history of controversial statements, Walsh was considered a long-shot candidate for the nomination. He announced the suspension of his campaign on February 7, 2020, after poor results in the Iowa caucuses.
Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, was impeached for the second time on January 13, 2021, one week before his term expired. It was the fourth impeachment of a U.S. president, and the second for Trump after his first impeachment in December 2019.