Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) downplayed the long-running feud between former President Donald Trump and the McCain family, arguing the late Sen. John McCain would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris like his son did this week.
Speaking to voters in Arizona, where the McCains are a household name, Vance acknowledged Trump’s turbulent relationship with McCain, a centrist Republican who died of brain cancer in 2018. But he claimed the two “didn’t let their personal grievances get in the way of serving the country.”
“I do not believe for a second that if John McCain were alive today, and he sees what’s going on at the American southern border, that he would support Kamala Harris and all the destruction that she’s brought,” Vance said in Phoenix on Thursday.
“I really don’t believe that,” he added.
Jimmy McCain, the youngest son of the late Arizona senator, told CNN that he decided to join the Democratic Party and endorse Harris over an incident at Arlington National Cemetery last month in which a Trump campaign official got into an altercation with cemetery staff.
But the bad blood extends back much further. In 2015, Trump famously doubted that John McCain, a naval officer in the Vietnam War, was a hero since he was captured behind enemy lines.
Their relationship soured again in 2017 when John McCain cast the deciding Republican vote against the “skinny” repeal of Obamacare in the Senate.
The McCain family name still has currency in Arizona, particularly with a segment of independent voters who identified with the senator’s “maverick” streak. Republican Kari Lake antagonized those voters, bragging that she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine,” before losing her run for Arizona governor in 2022.
But Vance dismissed Jimmy McCain’s endorsement as a distraction from the policy differences separating Trump and Harris. He and Trump are betting immigration will drive the outcome in a border state where Harris lags narrowly in public polling.
“I mean, look, who cares what somebody’s family thinks about a presidential race? I care about what these people care about the presidential race,” Vance said of the audience before pivoting to Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), whose brother and distant relatives made known their support for Trump this week.
“I don’t know if anybody noticed, but pretty much every single member of Tim Walz’s family came out and endorsed Donald Trump,” Vance said. “Is that a bigger story than what John McCain’s son said? I think so.”
Walz’s brother, who made the comment on Facebook, has since said he does not want to be involved in the presidential race.
Trump has other critics in the McCain family. Meghan McCain, the daughter of John McCain and a onetime co-host on The View, called herself a “proud member of the Republican Party” but said on Tuesday that she would not vote for Trump or Harris in November.
She has previously called Trump a “piece of s***” for disrespecting her father.
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Vance visited Phoenix as part of a larger swing through Arizona. One day earlier, he campaigned with Lake, who is now the Republican nominee for Senate, at a church in Mesa.
Lake has since softened her stance on John McCain and attempted, unsuccessfully, to mend fences with his family.
