Sen. John McCain put out a long-form installment of his running back-and-forth with President Donald Trump, writing an op-ed that branded the president as ‘often poorly informed.’
The hit comes after Trump repeatedly went after McCain for voting against an Obamacare repeal.
The observation was included in a long piece by the Arizonan calling for Congress return to order and get back to its ‘routine duties’ as well as bipartisan compromise.
But the Washington Post op-ed also included a searing indictment of the president that few other elected Republicans would dare to put forward.
Arizona Sen. John McCain wrote an op-ed that branded the president as ‘often poorly informed’
‘That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be in his speech and conduct,’ wrote McCain.
‘Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important,’ he added.
McCain begins his piece with a complete denunciation of white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, a more thinly veiled attack on Trump, who said there were bad people on ‘many sides’ of the protests that turned violent.
‘Americans recoiled from the repugnant spectacle of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville to promote their un-American ‘blood and soil’ ideology,’ McCain wrote. ‘There is nothing in their hate-driven racism that can match the strength of a nation conceived in liberty and comprising 323 million souls of different origins and opinions who are equal under the law.’
Then he called out the victim who got mowed down by name. ‘Most of us share Heather Heyer’s values, not the depravity of the man who took her life.’
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he walks to the White House in Washington, DC, on August 30, 2017 upon his return from Springfield, Missouri, where he spoke about tax reform
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) looks on during a press conference about his resistance to the so-called “Skinny Repeal” of the Affordable Care Act on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 27, 2017
The salvo was a latest in a running feud between the two men. Trump tore into McCain when he got a question about him last month. ‘Senator McCain? You mean the one who voted against ‘Obamacare? You mean Senator McCain who voted against us getting good health care?’ Trump asked.
Earlier, Trump lauded McCain when he returned from treatment for brain cancer to fly to Washington and cast a vote to proceed to the GOP leadership’s Obamacare repeal bill.
‘We came very close with health care. Unfortunately, John McCain decided to vote against it at the last minute,’ Trump continued. ‘You’ll have to ask John McCain why he did that.’
Trump’s most direct attack came during the campaign when he said ‘I like people who weren’t captured,’ referring to the five years in captivity in Vietnam by the downed Navy pilot.
McCain has taken jabs of his own. In May he called the Russia probe ‘Watergate size and scale.’
McCain also blasted Congress with familiar calls for bipartisan action.
‘Congress will return from recess next week facing continued gridlock as we lurch from one self-created crisis to another,’ he wrote.
‘We are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important.’
Roger Stone, a close personal friend of the president and former adviser to his presidential campaign had a harsh response to McCain’s statement on sheriff Joe Arpaio
McCain said last month that Trump’s pardon of Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio ‘undermines his claim for the respect of rule of law.’
Despite his call for bipartisan cooperation, McCain’s career has also been punctuated by periods of going along with the leadership strategy and going after Democrats in office. He voted against the George W. Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.