John McCain’s son vows to vote for Harris after Trump incident at Arlington National Cemetery
In the wake of an incident at Arlington National Cemetery last week, where members of the Donald Trumpcampaign of ‘allegedly had a verbal and physical altercation with a cemetery official*, Lt. Jimmy McCain, The son of the late Senator John McCain, has announced that he will vote for Kamala Harris this November and will “get involved in every way” possible to help her chances.
Speaking to CNN, McCain speak He called the cemetery incident—which reportedly involved the Trump campaign attempting to film and take photos in a restricted area—a “violation.” McCain, who served in the military for 17 years, told the outlet: “I was absolutely stunned. The men and women lying there had no choice” about whether to participate in a political campaign. “I just think that for anybody who has spent any amount of time in the military, they understand that—that it’s not about you. It’s about the people who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.”
McCain has been away from the Republican Party for a while, having registered as an independent and, as of a few weeks ago, a Democrat. But it appears that the Arlington National Cemetery incident prompted his decision to actually vote for Harris. Noting that the incident and the Trump campaign’s response** represent a new low when it comes to Trump’s disrespect for fallen soldiers, McCain suggested that the former president’s attitude stems from his insecurity about not serving himself. (Trump famously got out of going to Vietnam because bone spur“Many of these men and women who served their country chose to do something bigger than themselves,” McCain said. “They woke up one morning, they signed on the dotted line, they raised their right hand, and they chose to serve their country. And that’s an experience that Donald Trump has never had. And I think that’s probably something that he thinks about a lot.”
Trump has spent years publicly criticizing John McCain—both before and after the GOP senator and 2008 presidential candidate died. In 2015, when discussing McCain, Trump declared, “I like people who weren’t captured.” (McCain spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison.) The former president also:
The attacks on McCain are, of course, part of a broader pattern of demeaning troops in general. According to the report, Atlantic, later confirmed by Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former president call Marines who died at Belleau Wood during World War I were “suckers” and soldiers buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery were “losers.” Although Trump has denied the aforementioned remarks, in 2016 he public went after a Gold Star family, and in 2020, he propose A Gold Star family group may have infected him with COVID-19—despite the fact that he was reported tested positive for the virus before meeting them. Most recently, he declared the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award given to civilians for exceptional contributions, as “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor, an award reserved for members of the military, because the latter recipients were wounded or killed in action. So you can understand why the younger McCain didn’t want to bring him back to the White House.
