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The late Republican senator for Arizona, John McCain, wouldn’t have supported Kamala Harris if he saw the state of the US-Mexico border, according to GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance during a Phoenix campaign stop 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 said 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 campaign has frequently sought to paint Kamala Harris, who as Vice President worked with Central American countries to address root causes of migration, as the “border czar” personally responsible for the record number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border last year.
Arizona, a battleground state with both a high proportion of anti-immigration conservatives and immigrants from Mexico, is a testing ground for the appeal of the Trump’s campaign’s border message.
According to those who 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, toldPolitico.
In fact, one of McCain’s last actions in the Senate was to introduce a bipartisan border bill in 2018 - an effort with similarities to the Biden administration’s bipartisan border bill that Trump encouraged Republicans in Congress to tank earlier this year.
Earlier this week, McCain’s youngest son Jimmy, a longtime member of the military, announced he would be supporting Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris after Trump’s recent controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where he was photographed giving a thumbs-up near graves of recently-fallen soldiers.
Vance appeared to brush off that endorsement during his Phoenix speech.
“I mean, who cares what somebody’s family thinks about a presidential race?” Vance said, before arguing that the fact family members of Democratic VP pick Tim Walz support Trump is a “bigger story than what John McCain’s son said.”
McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, has also said that she won’t vote for Trump, but remains a proud Republican and won’t endorse Harris either.
“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 former McCain official, said the views of the late senator’s family still carry weight in Arizona, a hotly contested battleground which President Joe Biden flipped to blue in 2020.
John McCain frequently criticized Trump, blasting him as “dangerous” during the 2016 campaign. The Arizona senator often issued scathing remarks that many saw as directed at his fellow Republican, including implications he was a draft dodger and a backer of “half-baked, spurious nationalism.”
The Arizona senator died in 2018 from brain cancer and Trump was not invited to his funeral, reportedly at McCain’s request.
Trump, who avoided the Vietnam War draft due to a medical condition, famously questioned whether McCain, a naval pilot who became a prisoner of war, really was a hero.
“He was captured,” Trump told an interviewer. “Does being captured make you a hero? I am not sure.”
In 2017, McCain cast a key vote that stopped the Trump administration from repealing the Affordable Care Act.
