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Cindy McCain has endorsed US Democrat Joe Biden for the presidency, in a shocking reprimand of President Donald Trump by the Republican candidate’s widow in 2008.
Trump has had a strained relationship with members of the John McCain family ever since he despised the Arizona senator during his 2016 campaign. But the McCains, until now, have not supported Trump’s rivals.
Cindy McCain’s endorsement could help Biden appeal to Republicans unhappy with the Republican president and give the former vice president a boost in Arizona, a crucial state McCain represented in Congress for 35 years. She remains a revered figure since her death in 2018 from complications from a brain tumor, particularly among independent voters whom Biden is courting.
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Biden told donors Tuesday night that McCain’s endorsement was coming “because of what (Trump) talks about how my son and John and others who are heroes, who served their country. You know, he said they’re ‘losers, fools.’
Matt Rourke / AP
In this 2017 photo, US Republican Senator John McCain receives the Medal of Freedom from Democrat Joe Biden. McCain’s widow, Cindy, is going to hit for Biden, not Donald Trump.
McCain has tweeted his support for Biden and the presidential nominee responded.
Biden was referring to comments Trump allegedly made poking fun at the American war dead. Trump has denied making the comments, first reported through anonymous sources by The Atlantic, but many of the comments were later confirmed by The Associated Press.
Initially, Cindy McCain was not expected to offer an explicit endorsement of Biden, but she had already hit bat for her presidential run. She lent her voice to a video that aired during the Democratic National Convention and focused on Biden’s close friendship with her late husband.
AP
Cindy McCain will endorse Democrat Joe Biden as President of the United States.
John McCain was assigned as a military aide to Biden, then a senator, during a trip abroad, and their families formed a lasting friendship. They later shared a grim bond over glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that killed Biden’s son, Beau, three years before McCain succumbed to the same disease.
John McCain said in 2016 that he could not support Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, citing Trump’s degrading comments about women.
“It’s not nice for me to give up my party’s nominee,” McCain said during a debate while seeking his sixth term in the Senate. “She won the nomination fairly.”
John McCain, a Navy pilot, was shot down in North Vietnam in 1967. He was captured, beaten and held prisoner for more than five years, refusing to be released before other US service members.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump said of McCain: “He is not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t caught. ”McCain then angered Trump with his dramatic vote against repealing Obama’s health care bill.
The McCains’ daughter, Meghan McCain, has been outspoken about the pain she feels when the president belittles her father. Biden comforted Meghan McCain in an appearance on The view after his father was diagnosed with the cancer that ultimately took his life. She has said that Biden often reaches out to her for support, after losing his own son Beau to the same cancer in 2015.
Trump was not invited to John McCain’s funeral.
