Cindy McCain will speak for Joe Biden on Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention, lending her voice to a video tribute to Biden’s friendship with her late husband, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.
‘My husband and Vice President Biden enjoyed a 30+ year friendship dating back to before their years serving together in the Senate, so I was honored to accept the invitation from the Biden campaign to participate in a video celebrating their relationship,’ she wrote on Twitter.
Cindy McCain is the latest Republican to join the Democratic gathering after a number of prominent officials – former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former New York Representative Susan Molinari and former GOP California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard who now runs Quibi.
While she may not say specifically she is endorsing Biden for president, her participation in the video will be taken that way. It’s her biggest support of Biden’s candidacy and her first foray into the 2020 election.
Cindy McCain narrates a video that will air at Tuesday’s Democratic convention talking about Joe Biden’s friendship with her late husband John McCain
John McCain and Joe Biden met in the 1970s when McCain was assigned to be a military aide for Biden on a trip overseas – above a still from the video
John McCain’s voice is heard in the video joking he had to carry Joe Biden’s bags on that trip but Biden shot back McCain never carried his bags
The video narrated by Cindy McCain is called ‘An Unlikely Friendship’
John McCain spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam; President Trump insulted him in 2015 when he said he didn’t like people who are captured
Democrats have pushed a unity theme in their convention, which became a fully virtual gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic, selling Biden as a candidate who appeals to people across the political spectrum.
Many of the speeches have question President Donald Trump’s qualifications to hold the Oval Office while outlining Biden’s credentials for the job.
In an advance clip posted to YouTube and posted on her Twitter account, Cindy McCain talks about how Biden, then a Delaware senator, met her husband in the 1970s when John McCain was assigned to be a military aide for him on a trip overseas.
The video notes John McCain would joke he had to carry Biden’s bags, while Biden responds: ‘He never carried my bags.’
The two men became friends, and the families would gather for picnics in the Bidens; backyard.
John McCain and Joe Biden seen together in October 2017 when McCain received the Liberty Medal from Chair of the National Constitution Center’s Board of Trustees
John and Cindy McCain at the Ambrosetti International Economic Forum on September 1, 2017 in Cernobbio, Como, Italy
‘They would just sit and joke. It was like a comedy show, sometimes, to watch the two of them,’ Cindy McCain says in the clip.
Her appearance for Biden comes ahead of the Republican National Convention next week, where President Trump will be formally nominated for a second term.
Trump and the late senator had a long history of enmity the president targeting McCain both before and after his death.
In 2015, as a Republican presidential candidate, Trump said McCain – who spent five and half years in captivity during the Vietnam War – wasn’t a hero ‘because he was captured. I like people who weren´t captured.’
In July 2017, McCain, in his last vote as a senator, angered Trump when he gave a dramatic thumbs down to vote against repealing President Obama’s healthcare law. McCain was the deciding vote.
When McCain died on a Saturday in 2018 after suffering from brain cancer, the Trump administration lowered the flag over the White House to half-staff but had raised it by Monday.
There was a public outcry and the flag was eventually lowered again. Trump pointedly wasn’t invited to McCain’s funeral, which took place in Washington’s National Cathedral.
Instead McCain was eulogized by Obama, who defeated him in the 2008 presidential race with Biden as his running mate, and former President George W. Bush, who defeated McCain in the 2000 Republican presidential primary. Bill and Hillary Clinton were also in attendance as was a who’s who in the political world.
Biden gave a eulogy for McCain at a memorial service for him in Arizona ahead of his formal state funeral. Biden was a pallbearer for McCain during the service at Washington’s National Cathedral.
Even after his death, Trump continued to attack John McCain, going after him in March 2019 for his role in the Justice Department investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. During that contest, McCain received a copy of the unverified Christopher Steele dossier – which claimed that the Russians had blackmail material on Trump – and turned it over to federal authorities.
And during Trump’s May 2019 visit to Japan, the White House asked the U.S. Navy to move “out of sight” the warship USS John S. McCain ahead of President Trump’s visit to the shipyard at the Yokosuka Naval Base, where several American battleships were docked.
The ship is actually named after three McCains who served in the Navy: the late senator, as well as his grandfather, John S. McCain Sr., an admiral during World War II, and his father, John S. McCain Jr., an admiral in the Vietnam era.
Trump denied any knowledge of the request. Meghan McCain, in response, called the president a ‘child’ who will not let her late father rest in peace.
‘Trump is a child who will always be deeply threatened by the greatness of my dads incredible life.
‘There is a lot of criticism of how much I speak about my dad, but nine months since he passed, Trump won’t let him RIP. So I have to stand up for him. It makes my grief unbearable,’ she wrote on Twitter.
Meghan McCain has been the fiercest critic of her father’s legacy but Trump’s insults after the senator’s death grew so bad that the McCain’s youngest daughter Bridget, 27, made a rare public statement in defense of her late father.
Trump had complained in March 2019 during a visit to a manufacturing plant in Ohio that he didn’t get thanked for giving McCain ‘the kind of funeral that he wanted.’
‘I endorsed him at his request and I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don’t care about this, I didn’t get a thank-you. That’s okay. We sent him on the way. But I wasn’t a fan of John McCain,’ Trump said.
In response the late senator’s two daughters begged for the president to leave their dad and family alone with Bridget going as far as to call Trump a ‘child’ and saying he wasn’t invited to senator’s funeral because ‘you could not be counted on to be courteous.’
Senator John McCain participates in a reenactment of is swearing in ceremony with Vice President Joe Biden, inside the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill, with Cindy McCain
Joe Biden consoled Meghan McCain during an appearance on ‘The View’ after her father was diagnosed with brain cancer
Cindy McCain at her husband’s flag-draped coffin as he lies in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on August 31, 2018
Biden consoled Meghan McCain during an appearance on ‘The View’ after her father was diagnosed with brain cancer. Meghan McCain, who has become a fiery Trump critic, has said Biden continues to reach out to her.
Biden’s son Beau died from the same cancer as John McCain in 2015.
Meghan McCain has suggested she´d be voting for Biden in November but Cindy McCain has pointedly stayed out of the presidential race.
In April of last year, amid rumors that the McCains would wade into the election in support of Biden, Cindy McCain tweeted that Biden is ‘a wonderful man and a dear friend of the McCain family.’
‘However,’ she added at the time, ‘I have no intention of getting involved in presidential politics.’
The video on Biden’s friendship with McCain is one of a series of short documentaries created by Oscar Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim, who worked on ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ the 2006 documentary on climate change that featured former Vice President Al Gore and won an Academy Award.
Trump versus McCain – how the disputes developed
Trump has had few good words to say about John McCain and the feud stretches back to at least 2015. Here is a potted history.
Trump and McCain feuded for years, and the enmity continued beyond the grave
June 30, 2015: ‘I just disagree with his comments about the, quote, Mexicans,’ McCain said about the campaign speech in which Trump suggested Mexican immigrants bring ‘drugs’ and ‘crime’ into the U.S. and that some of them are ‘rapists.’
July 16, 2015: Trump calls McCain ‘weak’ during rally in Arizona. McCain hit back telling the New Yorker that Trump ‘fired up the crazies’ before Trump said ‘The thousands of people that showed up for me in Phoenix were amazing Americans. @SenJohnMcCain called them ‘crazies’–must apologize!’. He then added that McCain graduated last in his class in Annapolis and said he was a ‘dummy’.
July 18, 2015: Trump said of McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. ‘He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.’
December 22, 2015: McCain says he is ‘concerned’ over Trump’s praise of Russian president Vladimir Putin. ‘The thing that is so concerning about Mr. Trump’s compliments of Vladimir Putin is Vladimir Putin has slaughtered his own, murdered his own people, including people I knew. He has, his equipment has shot down an airliner and killed a couple hundred people.’
April 19, 2016: McCain announced he would not attend the Republican primary where Trump was due to be officially named the party’s presidential nominee.
August 1, 2016: McCain criticised Trump who had criticized the Gold Star parents of a fallen U.S army captain. He said: ‘In recent days, Donald Trump disparaged a fallen soldier’s parents. He has suggested that the likes of their son should not be allowed in the United States — to say nothing of entering its service. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.’
October 8, 2016: Footage emerged showing Trump making misogynistic comments in 2005. McCain, and wife Cindy, said in a statement: ‘Donald Trump’s behavior this week, concluding with the disclosure of his demeaning comments about women and his boasts about sexual assaults, make it impossible to continue to offer even conditional support for his candidacy
December 29, 2016: McCain associate David Kramer, an executive at the McCain Institute, met with BuzzFeed reporter Ken Bensinger and passed off British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s ‘dirty dossier’. Buzzfeed published the dossier two weeks later.
July 25, 2017: McCain rushed back to the Senate less than two weeks after brain surgery to vote ‘no’ on repealing the Affordable Care Act, which both he and Trump had campaigned on repealing.
April 17, 2018: McCain released memoir ‘The Restless Wave’ in which he made unflinching criticisms of Trump, Russia and his feelings of unease around the president.
June 20, 2018: Trump publicly blamed McCain for the Republican’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017. McCain’s daughter Meghan branded the move as ‘gross’.
September 1, 2018: McCain’s funeral is held at the Washington National Cathedral. He made explicit his wish that Trump not attend.
February 7, 2019: McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain appears on the Late Show and criticizes Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner for attending her father’s funeral. She said she would never squash her ‘beef’ with the Trump family.
March 2019: Trump continues to attack McCain. The president called him ‘horrible’ after the late senator’s two daughters begged for the president to leave their dad and family alone.
May 2019: It is claimed Trump wanted the USS John McCain ‘out of sight’ during his visit to Japan