He remains the Democrats’ favorite senator, six years after his death from brain cancer. In an era of ever-widening division, John McCain often pushed for consensus, memorably saving the Affordable Care Act with one emphatic thumb down.
McCain’s legacy is the subject of a developing political scrum between his outspoken daughter, former “The View” co-host Meghan McCain, and an author who once wrote an unflattering biography of the late senator.
It all started with seemingly innocuous comments by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Appearing at a campaign stop last week in Arizona, Harris praised her former colleague’s courage in casting a vote that thwarted the Republicans’ effort to overturn Obamacare, calling him a “great American and a war hero.”
It was this personal anecdote shared by Harris that seemed to get under McCain’s skin.
“I step onto the floor of the well of the Senate later that day — we had votes — and I passed by John McCain, and he looks at me, and he says, ‘Kid, come over here. You’re going to make a great senator,’” Harris recalled. “True story. True story.”
McCain responded with a tweet complaining about how “democrats want to reinvent history and turn my Dad into any illusion you guys need him to be depending on the political moment you need to bastardize his memory for.”
Recriminations are a staple of McCain’s X feed, and she stayed on brand by threatening to share what her father “actually” said about the current vice president, whom he served with briefly in the Senate.
“And consider this my final warning shot, I will start spilling tea,” she wrote.
Now, a third party has entered the equation: Democratic activist Cliff Schecter, author of “The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn’t.”
“I wrote a book about your dad in ’08, as I’m sure you know, Meghan. So go ahead and do it, nepo,” wrote Schecter. “Then I’ll share what your father’s advisors [and] others close to him told me he really thought about you.”
“Things I had no reason to publish except to be cruel, but will happily share now in light of what you’ve become. You go first.” he said in his Sunday tweet.
I wrote a book about your dad in '08, as I'm sure you know, Meghan. So go ahead and do it, nepo.
— Cliff Schecter (@cliffschecter) October 13, 2024
Then I'll share what your father's advisors & others close to him told me he really thought about you. Things I had no reason to publish except to be cruel, but will happily share… pic.twitter.com/htsT2mQdp8
Many on the left encouraged Schecter not to hold back.
“Do it. She’s trash. Even Mccains son has endorsed Harris. I don’t believe for one second John McCain if alive wouldn’t be going all out to defeat Trump,” one person replied.
McCain, who announced recently she won’t be endorsing Harris or Republican nominee Donald Trump, responded with a retweet of a follower’s smackdown of Schecter:
“Big brave badass couldn’t even tag @MeghanMcCain in his impotent rage fit. Ffs, why is every insecure, leftwing, political man like this? Do they look at Olbermann and jack off wishing they could one day be him? Just tiny, boring, red-faced lunatics begging for relevance.”
Tagging McCain would’ve been futile, Schecter wrote, because she blocked him years ago.
Another user added, “Wow. Brutal but deserved. She wants relevance by riding on her father’s coattails. It’s time she makes her way on her own merit, not by co-opting her father’s legacy. She never served this country. Her attention seeking behavior is as pitiful as Eric and Don Jr’s.”
It’s not clear exactly what precipitated their feud, but it likely has much to do with Schecter’s portrayal of the 2008 GOP presidential nominee “as a temperamental political chameleon who will do or say virtually anything to become president of the United States,” according to one review of his book.
Many on X found the threats and recriminations by Meghan McCain and Schecter to be a disservice to the dead senator’s memory.
“@MeghanMcCain abuse and use the late senator’s name to threaten people, and destroy his good name and reputation isn’t something I expected to see weeks before a presidential election,” one X user declared.
“I don’t even like Meghan really but this makes you a horrifying person. Ugh gross,” another chided.
For her part, McCain complained on X that Democrats are “too busy having unhinged nervous breakdowns projecting their mental illness and unresolved daddy issues at me screaming that my dad wasn’t really my dad – but actually every single msnbc prime time guests dad instead.”
It should be noted that Harris’ laudatory comments about McCain seem even more benign when contrasted to what Trump said about him in 2015 at a gathering of Iowa evangelicals.
“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump, who dodged the Vietnam War by claiming he had bone spurs. McCain was shot down by North Vietnamese troops and endured five-and-a-half years as a POW. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
