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Cindy McCain, widow of Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., Will voice support for Joe Biden at the all-virtual Democratic National Convention on Tuesday evening, adding to the growing number of prominent Republicans to attend the opposing party’s nominating convention . .
In a clip from a digital video that aired Tuesday night, titled “An Unlikely Friendship,” McCain recalls the camaraderie between Biden and her husband, who died in August 2018.
“They would sit and joke,” McCain says in the clip. “It was sometimes like a comedy to watch them both.”
McCain, in a tweet that included the video clip, wrote that: “My husband and Vice President Biden enjoyed a friendship of over 30 years dating back to before their years of service together in the Senate, so I was honored to accept Biden’s invitation. campaign to participate in a video celebrating their relationship. “
In the clip released Tuesday night before the event kicked off at 9 p.m., the narrator of the video explains that the men first met when McCain, as a young Senate liaison officer of the Navy, was assigned as Biden’s military assistant for a trip abroad he was taking as a senator. McCain and Biden served together in the Senate for more than 20 years.
The Associated Press was the first to report the news of McCain’s video and also reported that she would not explicitly endorse Biden despite the public display of support.
Other members of the McCain family have previously spoken of the support and warmth they received from Biden. Biden, whose son Beau died in 2015 from the same form of brain cancer that later killed McCain, publicly consoled McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, during a 2017 episode of “The View.”
Cindy McCain, however, will only be the last Republican to appear at the Democrats’ convention as the party seeks to provide shelter for disgruntled Republicans and independents rejected by President Donald Trump.
On Monday night, four prominent Republicans – former Ohio Governor John Kasich, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former New York Rep. Susan Molinari and Quibi CEO Meg Whitman, who was the nominee of the GOP in the 2010 California governor’s race – addressed the convention, urging Americans to vote against the “disappointing” and “disturbing” Trump.
Statement by Cindy McCain – who was released while Trump was in McCain’s home state of Arizona – also adds to the bitter feud her husband had with Trump. Trump has repeatedly criticized the longtime Arizona senator and Vietnam War hero, and repeatedly criticized him for voting against repealing the Affordable Care Act.
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said of McCain at a campaign event in Iowa in 2015. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. J love people who weren’t captured. ”
McCain volunteered to fight in Vietnam, and when the plane he was piloting was shot down in 1967, he was captured and tortured for more than five years. He refused early release and only saw freedom in 1973, when the war ended.
In 2017, in an act of defiance against Trump, McCain returned to Capitol Hill less than a week after being diagnosed with cancer to vote on the Republican effort to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act – the largest legislative achievement of President Barack Obama. , who defeated McCain in the 2008 election.
McCain initially voted in favor of debate on the bill, but then decisively voted against the repeal, which angered Trump.
Trump was urged to stay away from McCain’s funeral and only reluctantly ordered White House flags to half the staff under pressure from veterans groups when McCain died.
Trump continued to attack McCain after his death. In 2019, seven months after McCain’s death, the president again criticized the senator’s vote on the Affordable Care Act, telling reporters he “has never been a fan” of the Arizona lawmaker. “And never will be”.
Just before that, Trump had accused McCain of sending a research dossier on Trump’s opposition compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele into the hands of multiple media outlets in late 2016.
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