Cindy and Meghan McCain hit back at President Trump for attacking ailing Sen. John McCain
Dan Nowicki
The wife and daughter of ailing Sen. John McCain hit back at President Donald Trump Wednesday in response to Trump's "incredibly hurtful" attack on McCain last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Trump on Friday stirred up the CPAC crowd to boo McCain over his vote last summer to derail Senate Republican efforts to undo former President Barack Obama's signature Affordable Care Act.
McCain, 81, continues to battle an aggressive form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma.
"My own feeling is we need more compassion, we need more empathy, we need more togetherness, in terms of working together," Cindy McCain said during an appearance Wednesday on ABC's "The View," which daughter Meghan McCain co-hosts.
"We don't need more bullying, and I'm tired of it," Cindy McCain added.
Meghan McCain disclosed a previous telephone conversation with Trump and first lady Melania Trump in which she got the impression that Trump would be laying off her dad.
The talk with Trump came, Meghan McCain said, after she publicly complained on social media about a news report indicating that Trump had physically mocked McCain's Vietnam War injuries. McCain was shot down in 1967 and held by North Vietnam as a prisoner of war for more than five years.
"I had a really nice conversation with him and Melania and I really was under the impression that this sort of fight between our families, and between him and my father especially at this particular moment, would end," Meghan McCain said.
"I understand the argument is he's talking about policy, and that's the attack, but it's still incredibly hurtful, especially after I had this conversation with him on the phone, to have this moment of booing at CPAC, which is supposed to be the mothership of conservatism and the Republican Party.
"And to sort of see booing at this specific moment in time is incredibly hurtful and I feel, quite frankly, very naive to have believed that this would be any different."
Cindy McCain also gave The View's audience a health update on her husband.
"He's doing OK. You know, chemo and radiation is a very tough customer," Cindy McCain said. "It does so much good but it also does a lot of damage. And so he's recovering from the last round of chemo and radiation. He's tough as a boot, he's at our ranch, and he's watching today."
Though McCain and Trump have publicly feuded since 2015, the tensions between the two had somewhat subsided in recent weeks. McCain was hospitalized in Bethesda, Maryland, before Christmas for a viral infection and for side effects to his chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Since Dec. 17, McCain has been in Arizona. He has been getting physical therapy at his family's cabin near Sedona.
Speaking at CPAC, the American Conservative Union's annual gathering of the right in the Washington, D.C., area, Trump gestured up and down with his thumb as he talked about the "one senator" who torpedoed the GOP's effort to roll back the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare."
Trump did not actually mention McCain by name.
"Remember, one person walked into a room, when he was supposed to go this way (thumb up), and he said he was going this way (thumb up), and he walked in and he went this way (thumb down), and everyone said, 'What happened? What was that all about?' Boy, oh boy," Trump said.
In a vote in the early hours of July 28, McCain on the Senate floor famously gave a thumbs down to the Republican "skinny repeal" of key "Obamacare" provisions. It was the deciding vote that killed the legislation.
"Who was that? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know," Trump asked the CPAC crowd, which responded by shouting McCain's name.
"I don't want to be controversial, so I won't use his name," Trump said. "What a mess. But it's all happening anyway."
On Saturday, Meghan McCain mixed it up with Matt Schlapp, the American Conservative Union chair, who on Twitter defended the crowd's booing of McCain by saying "folks were booing his vote to retain obamacare. That's worth a boo."
Meghan McCain wasn't having it.
"Given what my family is going through right now and what my father has given to this country I would expect better from both you and the crowd, Matt," the younger McCain tweeted. "But please, continue making excuses for the inexcusable."
Nowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter, @dannowicki.
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