President Joe Biden hit out at Donald Trump on Thursday for his past repeated attacks on the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The president sat down with journalist Nicolle Wallace to discuss a wide range of topics in an interview on MSNBC, during which he took a moment to talk about working across the aisle.
Wallace, who was a top aide to McCain during his 2008 presidential run, asked Biden how he imagined the decorated Vietnam veteran would feel about the Republican Party of today and its increasingly extreme politics.
“I don’t think he’d think much of it,” the president said, adding that he couldn’t speak for the politician, who died in 2018 of brain cancer.
Biden talked about his deep connection with McCain, whom he met in the 1970s while working on veterans affairs issues.
Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
He remembered encouraging his friend to run for office, despite their political differences.
″[McCain] started working with me when he came back … from being a prisoner of war, and I helped talk him into running,” the president said of the senator, who was imprisoned in Vietnam for more than five years. “And I used to kid him. I said, ‘You’ve got to, damn it.’”
Biden added that while the pair “used to argue like hell, argue like brothers,” they would always “end up hugging one another” in the end.
Though the duo didn’t always agree, the president reminded Wallace about how he’s defended McCain’s legacy against members of McCain’s own party, particularly former President Trump.
“You may recall I got very upset with the last president and even with my good friend Lindsey [Graham], sometimes because of the denial” of McCain’s heroism. Biden said, later noting, “Come on, this guy was a hero! We may disagree, but he was a completely, thoroughly honorable man.”
Trump has never quite masked his disdain for McCain.
Charlie Neilbergall/Associated Press
In July 2015, then-candidate Trump belittled the senator’s military career. saying, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
His irritation with McCain intensified after the Arizona senator’s last-minute decision to vote against a Republican measure to dismantle the Affordable Care Act in July 2017.
Talking about McCain’s vote across party lines in a 2019 White House press briefing, Trump said, “I think that’s disgraceful. Plus there are other things. I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be.”
Trump complained about McCain once again in his 2023 coffee-table book, “Letters to Trump,” in which he wrote, “I never warmed to him. Never felt good about anybody having anything to do with John McCain and never will, even despite the fact that at their request, I gave him the world’s longest funeral, 11 days. Much like his wars, it never ended.”
McCain’s memorial events spanned five days, only one of which took place at the U.S. Capitol.
Biden served as one of the senator’s pallbearers during services at the Washington National Cathedral.
McCain asked for President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush to deliver his eulogies, while personally requesting that Trump not be invited to his funeral.
Watch Biden’s full McCain comments here:
