US Elections: How John McCain Helped Seal Donald Trump’s Fate in Arizona

Of the 15 states that are America’s battlegrounds, it should have been a safe bet that Donald Trump would win the 11 electoral votes available in Arizona.

The state, in the southwest of the nation, has only been called for one Democratic candidate since 1952: Bill Clinton, in 1996.

But the president’s constant attacks on one man, the late Senator John McCain, may have contributed to a huge backlash in Arizona that will not only turn Joe Biden blue, but secure Trump’s electoral defeat.

As Fox News and The Associated Press called the state for Biden, the fury of Trump supporters was quickly directed at McCain’s widow, Cindy, who endorsed Biden in September and, in the words of conservative Mark Levin, “helped cost us Arizona”.

The hostility dates back to the 2016 campaign, when Trump disparaged the Arizona senator by declaring McCain “not a war hero” for serving in the Vietnam War.

“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said of McCain in 2015.

“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who were not captured.”

During a Republican Veterans panel for Biden-Harris, Cindy McCain said that in the months leading up to Trump’s election: “I heard him denigrate my husband and then denigrate my husband again while [John] he was on his deathbed. “

Biden has been a longtime friend of the McCain family, coming together not only as parents of children who have served in the military, but also because of glioblastoma, the aggressive brain cancer that killed Biden’s son Beau, three years before McCain succumbed to the same disease.

“Now more than ever,” Cindy McCain said in the first television ad of the Biden campaign, “we need a president who puts service before himself.”

McCain said that Biden “would always fight for the American people, like John did.”

Hours after Trump addressed yesterday to claim his election had been stolen, John McCain’s 2008 concession speech went viral.

McCain, who lost his presidential race to former President Barack Obama 12 years ago, began his speech by congratulating Obama on his presidency and asking his supporters to respect the will of the people.

John McCain died in August 2018.

Barack Obama delivered a moving eulogy in his honor.