Sullivan claims he pushed back on Trump to defend McCain. He didn’t.
In 2018, when Sen. John McCain was dying of brain cancer and facing steady ridicule from President Donald Trump, Sen. Dan Sullivan had plenty of opportunities to defend McCain and say that Trump was wrong.
I was surprised to read a news account last week in which Sullivan was quoted as saying, after the debate with Mary Peltola, that he had spoken. out against Trump’s attacks on McCain, citing that as a second example of how he denounced abusive language by Trump.
The one example he gave at the debate dealt with Trump’s insults of Megyn Kelly in 2015.
The problem with Sullivan’s story is that he did not speak out to defend McCain, the man who Sullivan insists was his mentor in ther U.S. Senate. Sullivan did not contradict any of Trump’s repeated insults. He stayed silent.
“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said of McCain in 2015.
In May 2018, a low-level White House aide had joked that McCain’s opposition to a CIA nominee was not important because McCain was dying.
When this became a story Sullivan claimed it was emblematic of the “low levels of civil discourse” by Democrats and Republicans and that the employee should apologize.
That was not Sullivan standing up to Trump, who had shown a lack of class regarding McCain on many occasions.
Appearing on "Meet the Press" Sunday September 2, 2018, Sullivan ducked questions about Trump's disrespect toward McCain, which had continued after McCain’s death a week earlier.
Trump never stopped mocking McCain, even refusing to mention his name when signing a defense bill Congress named for McCain. Trump vetoed the idea of issuing a statement praising McCain after his. death.
"How do you explain the president's behavior and how he comported himself this week in regards to John McCain?" host Chuck Todd asked Sullivan on the day McCain was buried.
"Well, look, we know there's been tension between them. I would say that the Trump administration, overall, was very engaged. You had an important speech that the pres-- the vice president gave at the ceremony of laying in state in the dome. Yesterday, there was a number of folks from the administration there," Sullivan said.
Sullivan could have taken the opportunity to reject Trump's attacks, but he reverted to his standard practice of never saying anything that might offend the president. Pretending that there was "tension" in the Trump/McCain hatefest fits that pattern of obsequious behavior.
"You kind of gloss over it. Why? He's the President of the United States," said Todd.
"What what I’m trying to -- Chuck, I'm not trying to gloss over it," said Sullivan.
"I’m not trying to gloss over it. But here's what I think is more important. Yes, there was tensions between the president and John McCain. This week, though, has been all about John McCain and the unity of his vision of courage, of patriotism, of freedom, of service before self. And I think that's the lesson that we should take away from the week. That's what I want. I think that's what the family wants to take away."
Sullivan was right. He wasn't "trying to gloss over it." He glossed over it.
It didn’t matter to Trump that McCain was dying. The president had made it a standard part of his stand-up act to ridicule McCain for his vote in 2017 on the Obamacare repeal, complete with the thumbs-down gesture.
After McCain’s funeral Trump took to complaining that no one thanked him for approving it.
Trump probably never read what McCain had written about him in his 2018 book, "The Restless Wave."
"I'm not sure what to make of President Trump's convictions," McCain wrote. "His lack of empathy for refugees, innocent, persecuted, desperate men, women, and children, is disturbing. The way he speaks about them is appalling, as if welfare or terrorism were the only purposes they could have in coming to our country.”
"He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones. The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values. The world expects us to be concerned with the condition of humanity. We should be proud of that reputation. I’m not sure the president understands that."\
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