In a new post-Election Day interview, Cindy McCain — the widow of the late John McCain — explains some of her opposition to outgoing President Donald Trump. Prior to Election Day, Cindy endorsed Joe Biden, who has since become the president-elect, and her endorsement followed frenzied attacks on the McCain family from Trump, who sounded like he couldn’t stand even slightly sharing the spotlight with just about anyone. Trump’s obsessive antagonism of the McCains has seemed pathological. Now, Cindy explains that prior to her endorsement of Biden, while completing overseas charity work, she found defending the U.S. to the world increasingly difficult.
Cindy explained that, eventually, there was “no explanation anymore” — the behavior of the Trump administration couldn’t be explained away. Cindy explains that she concluded that Donald doesn’t “really understand what it means to serve.” She recently said the following to The Washington Post:
‘I was overseas at least once a month, if not more. I’d watch the demise of respect of our country around the globe, watch us leave our allies on the battlefield, watch us throw away our treaties, etc. You say, ‘Well, we’re better than that.’ But finally, there comes a time when there’s no explanation anymore, and that was very much the case with me. There were so many people like my husband and so many millions of other people who served so nobly. And then to have it tossed away by someone who I don’t believe really understands what it means to serve.’
One of Trump’s infamous early attacks on the McCains was his 2015 complaint that he likes “people who weren’t captured,” deriding McCain’s status as a de facto military hero following his years of captivity as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War era. This time around, Trump lost Arizona, which hadn’t gone to a Democratic presidential nominee since the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was running for re-election.
Meghan McCain — John and Cindy’s daughter — posted a cheery image of her father on Twitter after Trump’s Arizona loss that had been captioned with the message: “I like people who don’t lose Arizona.”
In light of tonight’s news….
*sorry I had to, the meme is too funny. pic.twitter.com/lo6xHqCbk0
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) November 13, 2020
As for Cindy, she says that a breaking point for her connection to the Trump wing of the Republican Party came with the publication of a report from The Atlantic saying that Trump had referred to fallen American service members as “losers” and “suckers.” Trump has denied making the comments, but they mirror his public behavior.
As Cindy put it:
‘I thought, ‘My God, how could somebody say something like this about our young people who are willing to fight and die for this country without being asked?’ And somehow he thought that they were losers and suckers. And I’d listened to the rants against the Gold Star families, and each blow was a little worse than the last. That was all it took for me.’
Trump has claimed that widespread fraud plagued the recent election, which he claims that he won, which simply did not happen. His claims have no meaningful merit, and he won’t be the president anymore following Biden’s inauguration, whether he likes it or not.
