1st Lieutenant Jimmy McCain ripped into former President Donald Trump following reports that two of Trump's staffers "verbally abused and pushed" an Arlington National Cemetery official who attempted to stop them from filming in an area with recent U.S. military casualties.
Jimmy McCain, the youngest son of the late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain who has served in the military for 17 years, said the Trump campaign's conduct "blows me away" in remarks to CNN:
"It just blows me away. These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice [of whether or not to be associated with a political campaign]."
“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.”
Jimmy McCain opined that the Arlington episode marks a new low in what he sees as Trump’s disrespect for the fallen:
"Many of these men and women, who served their country, chose to do something greater than themselves. They woke up one morning, they signed on the dotted line, they put their right hand up, and they chose to serve their country. And that’s an experience that Donald Trump has not had. And I think that might be something that he thinks about a lot.”
McCain’s anger over the incident was especially intense because it occurred right after he returned from a seven-month deployment to Tower 22, a small US base on the Jordan-Syria border. He arrived there shortly after three U.S. service members were killed in a drone attack by Iran-backed militants, and those fallen comrades were on his mind when he saw Trump posing in front of gravestones last Monday.
He said:
“It was a violation. That mother, that sister, those families, see that — and it’s a painful experience.”
Jimmy McCain—who recently changed his voter registration to Democratic and said he would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November's election—is particularly angry given Trump's prior attacks on his father.
Trump notoriously mocked the late Arizona Senator's injuries that came from his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam from 1967 to 1973 and resulted in his inability to move his arms above his head for the rest of his life.
In 2015, Trump, then a presidential candidate, infamously said that McCain was "not a war hero" because "he was captured" and "I like people who weren’t captured."
Senator McCain, in response, mocked Trump's multiple draft deferments, pointing to wealthy Americans who were able to get out of being drafted into service. During his lifetime, the Senator was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his military service.
Jimmy McCain said:
“John McCain was my father, and a lot of people lose that in the minutia. He wasn’t ‘John McCain’ the way he is to the world. He was the man who loved me. And the one thing I’ve known about my dad since the moment I could think, was that he was a good man and that he had done his part."
"And for me to be with him towards the end of his life, hearing things [from Trump] like, he was a loser because he was captured—I don’t think I could ever overlook that.”
Many praised the younger McCain for speaking out.
Trump has a history of disrespecting members of the military, particularly, as he put it, the "suckers and losers" who die in combat.
A 2020 report from The Atlantic revealed that Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018. At the time, four individuals with direct knowledge of the situation said that Trump declined the visit due to concerns about his hair being affected by the rain and a lack of importance placed on honoring American war dead.
During discussions with senior staff members on the morning of the planned visit, Trump questioned the necessity of visiting the cemetery, referring to it as "filled with losers." Additionally, on the same trip, he reportedly referred to the over 1,800 marines who perished at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for losing their lives.
Trump made headlines this month for claiming the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, is actually "better" than the Congressional Medal of Honor, which is the highest military honor, since civilians don't have to die or be wounded to receive it.
In fact, Trump said the Presidential Medal of Freedom he gave to billionaire donor Miriam Adelson is "much better" than the Congressional Medal of Honor given to wounded or dead members of the U.S. military.
Adelson is estimated to be the fifth richest woman in America with a net worth of $27.7 billion. She and her late husband Sheldon Adelson were Trump’s most significant financial supporters during his presidency. They made the largest contributions to his 2016 campaign, his presidential inauguration, his defense fund during the Mueller investigation into Russian interference, and his 2020 campaign.
