Former Aide Explains Why McCain Really Didn’t Care About Trump’s Insults

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Last updated on July 9th, 2021 at 07:43 am

Speaking to the progressive PAC MeidasTouch’s podcast this week, Grant Woods, a former aide to the late Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) explained why his boss wasn’t bothered by insults leveled at him by former 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 changed his registration to Democrat in 2018, told the podcast.

“McCain really didn’t 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.”

“It did not bother him a bit. I mean, not a bit,” he said. “He wasn’t, like, pissed for five seconds and then got over.”

Trump often attacked McCain’s war record. McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, was highly regarded among veterans.

“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump in 2015. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

“He lost and let us down,” Trump added. “I’ve never liked him as much after that. I don’t like losers.”

According to Woods, McCain only became bothered by those specific comments after speaking to some of his friends, fellow prisoners of war.

“It’s 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, you’re not a hero, that’s all bogus.’ That wasn’t right to put an 80-year-old guy through that at that point in time, because they are heroes and I’d never heard anyone say differently.”

You can listen to the interview in the video below.