Grant Woods, a former chief of staff to the late Sen. John McCain , recalled why the Arizona Republican couldnt have cared less about the insults leveled at him by ex-President Donald Trump .
It did not bother him a bit because he had such little respect he had no respect for Donald Trump anyway, Woods, a former GOP Arizona attorney general who became a Democrat in 2018, told progressive PAC MeidasTouch s podcast this week.
Trump repeatedly attacked McCain during his 2016 campaign and presidency. He mocked the decorated Navy veteran for being captured and held as a prisoner for five years during the Vietnam War, even though Trump himself avoided the draft with a series of student and medical deferments.
McCain really didnt spend hardly any time thinking about Trump or worrying about Trump or any of that, Woods said. He called it as he saw it, and he thought Trump was an asshole and he thought he was an idiot. And if he spent any time on it, it was in trying not to say that publicly as much as he thought it.
Woods added that McCain, who died in August 2018 following a brain cancer diagnosis, was not fazed by Trumps comments.
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It did not bother him a bit. I mean, not a bit, he said. He wasnt, like, pissed for five seconds and then got over.
McCain only later became bugged by Trumps attacks on his war record after talking with his POW friends, Woods said.
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Its one thing for John McCain, where he was, to go, Yeah, who cares. But for these guys, their identity, their life was wrapped up in being a POW, he said. So to then have someone nationally say, Hey, youre not a hero, thats all bogus. That wasnt right to put an 80-year-old guy through that at that point in time, because they are heroes and Id never heard anyone say differently.
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