John McCain’s Ghost Helps Chase Donald Trump

    Trump’s Ridicule of the Late Senator’s Prisoner of War Status Cost Him

November 29, 2020 – President Donald Trump’s disparaging of the late Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona helped flip the Republican state - who hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential in 24 years - to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, McCain’s longtime confidant said Sunday.

          Mark Salter, who worked for McCain for 18 years, stated on the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields that Biden’s win of Arizona by only about 10,000 votes was aided by former McCain backers angered at Trump.

          “It was a factor,” said Salter, whose wrote a new book, The Luckiest Man: Life with John McCain. “On the margins probably, but in a race decided by less than 11,000 votes, you win it on the margins.”

           In June 2015, Trump stated: “I like people who weren’t captured,” referring to McCain’s five and a half years in a North Vietnamese Prisoner of War camp where he suffered savage beatings that left his right arm immobilized.

          Salter also noted that 18,000 more Arizona Native Americans voted for Biden. McCain had good relationships with the tribes because he supported reservation casino gambling, which Trump opposed, he said.

          But Salter projected that if Republicans win a January runoff Senate election in Georgia and gain control of the chamber, Biden, a former longtime U.S. Senator from Delaware, will have difficulty working with current Senators because some Republicans will adopt Trump’s “insult politics.”

         “It’s a little more dysfunctional than when Biden was serving,” Salter said. “It’s a trickier environment, and you have half the Republican caucus running for president in 2024.”

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The Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields can be heard at: retailpoliticspodcast.com and on Apple and Spotify. Shields is a former congressional correspondent and author of the new book: The Front Row: My Jagged Journey Recording American History from Reagan to Trump now available on Amazon.com.

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