Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will express support for Joe Biden at the all-virtual Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, adding to the growing number of prominent Republicans to participate in the opposing party’s nominating convention.
In a clip of a digital video released Tuesday night, titled “An Unlikely Friendship,” McCain recalls the camaraderie between her late husband and the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“They would just sit and joke,” McCain says in the clip. “It was like a comedy show sometimes to watch the two of them.”
McCain, in a tweet that included the video clip, wrote that, “My husband and Vice President Biden enjoyed a 30+ year friendship dating back to before their years serving together in the Senate, so I was honored to accept the invitation from the Biden campaign to participate in a video celebrating their relationship.”
In the clip posted Tuesday evening ahead of the event's 9 p.m. kickoff, the video’s narrator explains that the men first came to know each other when McCain, as a young Navy Senate liaison, was assigned to Biden as a military aide for an overseas trip he was taking as a senator. McCain and Biden served in the Senate together for more than 20 years.
The Associated Press was first to report the news of McCain’s video, and also reported that she would not explicitly endorse Biden despite the public show of support.
McCain, however, will be just the latest Republican to appear at the Democrats’ convention as the party seeks to provide shelter for disaffected Republicans and independents turned off by President Donald Trump.
On Monday night, four prominent Republicans — former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former New York Rep. Susan Molinari and Quibi CEO Meg Whitman, who was the Republican nominee in the 2010 California governor's race — addressed the convention, urging Americans to vote against the "disappointing" and "disturbing" Trump.
McCain’s statement also adds to the bitter feud that her late husband had with Trump. Trump has repeatedly dissed the longtime Arizona senator and Vietnam War hero and has on a number of occasions criticized him for voting against repealing the Affordable Care Act.
"He's not a war hero," Trump said of McCain at a campaign event in Iowa in 2015. "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured." McCain died in 2018, a little over a year after being diagnosed with brain cancer.
McCain volunteered to fight in Vietnam and, when the plane he was flying was shot down in 1967, he was captured and, for more than five years, tortured. He refused an early release and only saw freedom in 1973 as the war ended.
In 2017, in an act of defiance against Trump, McCain returned to the Capitol less than a week after his cancer was diagnosed to cast his vote on the Republican effort to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act — the biggest legislative achievement of President Barack Obama, who defeated McCain in the 2008 election.
McCain first voted in favor of debating the bill, but later cast the decisive vote against repeal, enraging Trump.
