McCain's son blasts Trump on Arlington photo op "violation"
When former President Donald Trump held a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery last week, 1st Lt. Jimmy McCain says he viewed it as a “violation.”
The youngest son of the late Sen. John McCain had already been moving away from the Republican Party — just weeks ago, he changed his voter registration to Democrat and plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November, he told CNN in an exclusive interview this week.
But he is speaking out now for the first time about Trump because of the former president’s conduct at the hallowed ground where several generations of McCain’s family, including his grandfather and great grandfather, are buried.
“It just blows me away,” McCain, who has served in the military for 17 years, told CNN. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice” of whether to be a backdrop for a political campaign, he said.
“I just think that for anyone who’s done a lot of time in their uniform, they just understand that inherently — that it’s not about you there. It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country.”
McCain’s decision to speak out now is part of his broader shift away from the Republican Party and his family’s famously conservative roots. After years as a registered independent, he says he registered as a Democrat several weeks ago and plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November, adding that he “would get involved in any way I could” to help her campaign. [snip]
“It was a violation,” McCain said. “That mother, that sister, those families, see that — and it’s a painful experience.”...
VP Harris not playing by Trump's or the media's rules
...As last week’s CNN interview demonstrated, Harris has learned from Clinton’s experiences. Instead of accepting Bash’s framing and “admitting” that she had “flip-flopped,” Harris stated repeatedly that her “values have not changed.” Indeed, as Harris asserted, her willingness to alter her positions on certain matters when presented with new evidence and new realities demonstrates a consistent adherence to her “values,” not a willingness to compromise them.
The result? Bash’s line of questioning lost its punch for much the same reason that her effort to bait Harris to engage with Trump’s racist taunts failed: because Harris has refused to play by the tired old rules.
It’s hardly a coincidence that over the past several weeks, the power of the press to impact the tenor and focus of the presidential campaign — and the power of Trump to do the same — has been suddenly thrown into question. By refusing to engage with Trump’s taunts or play by journalists’ rules, Harris has upended presumptions about politics that have dominated during most of the past decade. And that’s a good thing...
The best possible outcome in November for the future of the Republican Party is for former President Donald Trump to lose and lose soundly. GOP leaders won’t tell you that on the record. I just did.
Trump will never concede defeat, no matter how thorough his loss. Yet the more decisively Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and electoral college the less political oxygen he’ll have to reprise his 2020 antics; and, importantly, the faster Republicans can begin building a post-Trump party...
We hope to help them along in their quest.
