Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, narrated a video touting Joe Biden’s leadership and praising Biden’s friendship with her late husband. The video aired at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night as delegates voted Biden in as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Cindy’s praise for Biden came as the DNC has had other Republicans cross party lines to speak on Biden’s behalf ahead of his nomination. While her comments were not an explicit endorsement of Biden, she said Biden has a “style of legislating and leadership that you don’t find much anymore” and the video highlights John McCain’s vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” one of the major legislative works from when Biden served as Vice President to President Barack Obama.
John McCain was a Navy pilot who was shot down over Vietnam and held as a prisoner of war. After being set free John McCain later became a U.S. Senator and who eventually served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Cindy McCain described her husband’s friendship with Biden as an unlikely one that began when John was assigned as a military aide to a trip overseas early on in Biden’s time as a U.S. Senator.
Cindy McCain noted her husband and Biden were on different political sides, but that Biden often worked with Republicans by crossing party lines.
“Even if a deal seemed out of reach, it was always Joe who tried to cross the aisle,” the video narration said. “. . . For three decades, Joe was able to move his colleagues and find a way forward: on violence against women, banning chemical weapons, assault weapons, and controlling nuclear arms.”
President Donald Trump and John McCain have had their own disputes while the senator was still alive.
In 2015, McCain said Trump’s candidacy was appealing to “the crazies” and Trump lashed out at McCain saying he was only considered a war hero for his capture and “I like people who weren’t captured.”
The strained relationship between Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, and the John McCain, the Republican Senator, continued even after Trump won the presidency. Along with voting down the Obamacare repeal favored by Republicans and that John McCain himself had campaigned for, McCain also wrote a 2017 op-ed, in which he called President Trump “poorly informed” and “impulsive.”
John McCain died in 2018 after a battle with brain cancer. Trump was not invited and did not attend the funeral.
The Cindy McCain campaign-style video that played at the DNC comes even after she said she in April of 2019 that she had “no intention of getting involved in presidential politics,” Business Insider reported. The video played the same night DNC delegates voted Tuesday night to endorse Biden as the presidential nominee.
