The late Republican senator for Arizona, John McCain, wouldn’t have supported Kamala Harris if he noticed the state of the US-Mexico border, in keeping with GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance throughout a Phoenix marketing campaign cease this week.
“Look, one of the things I love about Donald Trump, and I never knew John McCain, but I suspect that one of the things that I would have loved about John McCain is that they didn’t let their personal grievances get in the way of serving the country,” Vance mentioned on Thursday.
“OK, so John McCain, I’m sure, disagreed with Donald Trump on a whole host of issues. And, yes, Donald Trump disagreed with John McCain on a whole host of issues. I do not believe for a second that if John McCain were alive today, and he sees what’s going on at the American southern border, that he would support Kamala Harris and all the destruction she’s wrought.”
The Trump-Vance marketing campaign has often sought to color Kamala Harris, who as Vice President labored with Central American international locations to handle root causes of migration, because the “border czar” personally answerable for the report variety of migrant encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border final yr.
Arizona, a battleground state with each a excessive proportion of anti-immigration conservatives and immigrants from Mexico, is a testing floor for the enchantment of the Trump’s marketing campaign’s border message.
According to those that knew John McCain, Vance’s sentiment missed the mark. “John McCain was working for a solution to the border, not just politicizing it,” Wes Gullet, McCain’s former state director, instructedPolitico.
In truth, considered one of McCain’s final actions within the Senate was to introduce a bipartisan border invoice in 2018 – an effort with similarities to the Biden administration’s bipartisan border invoice that Trump inspired Republicans in Congress to tank earlier this yr.
Earlier this week, McCain’s youngest son Jimmy, a longtime member of the army, introduced he could be supporting Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris after Trump’s current controversial go to to Arlington National Cemetery, the place he was photographed giving a thumbs-up close to graves of recently-fallen troopers.
Vance appeared to brush off that endorsement throughout his Phoenix speech.
“I mean, who cares what somebody’s family thinks about a presidential race?” Vance mentioned, earlier than arguing that the very fact members of the family of Democratic VP choose Tim Walz assist Trump is a “bigger story than what John McCain’s son said.”
McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, has additionally mentioned that she received’t vote for Trump, however stays a proud Republican and received’t endorse Harris both.
“I greatly respect the wide variety of political opinions of all of my family members and love them all very much,” she tweeted.
Gullett, the previous McCain official, mentioned the views of the late senator’s household nonetheless carry weight in Arizona, a hotly contested battleground which President Joe Biden flipped to blue in 2020.
John McCain often criticized Trump, blasting him as “dangerous” in the course of the 2016 marketing campaign. The Arizona senator typically issued scathing remarks that many noticed as directed at his fellow Republican, together with implications he was a draft dodger and a backer of “half-baked, spurious nationalism.”
The Arizona senator died in 2018 from mind most cancers and Trump was not invited to his funeral, reportedly at McCain’s request.
Trump, who averted the Vietnam War draft as a consequence of a medical situation, famously questioned whether or not McCain, a naval pilot who grew to become a prisoner of battle, actually was a hero.
“He was captured,” Trump instructed an interviewer. “Does being captured make you a hero? I am not sure.”
In 2017, McCain solid a key vote that stopped the Trump administration from repealing the Affordable Care Act.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jd-vance-john-mccain-harris-b2608573.html