The latest comments about Sen. John McCain exemplify Trump’s model for presidential communication, both in form and tone, exploiting the power and urgency of social media. But they also sparked swift condemnation.AMR ALFIKY/Reuters
Tucked between St. Patrick’s Day greetings and repeat criticism of a rerun of Saturday Night Live, President Donald Trump demonstrated that not even death provides a respite from his wrath on Twitter.
In Twitter posts on Saturday and Sunday, Trump renewed his criticism of war hero Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona., who died in August from complications from a virulent form of brain cancer.
The president attacked McCain over his role in the Justice Department investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. He then added that McCain “had far worse ‘stains’” on his record, including the senator’s decisive vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act.
The comments exemplified Trump’s new model for presidential communication, both in form and tone, exploiting the power and urgency of social media. But they also sparked swift condemnation, showing that the president abandons conventional boundaries of civility like not speaking ill of the dead at his peril.
“There’s no low with him,” John Weaver, a former political adviser to McCain, said in an interview. “There’s no bottom.”
Trump and McCain had a long history of enmity. McCain provided a copy of the Steele Dossier – which outlined a range of often salacious but unproven misdeeds by Trump and his associates – to the FBI after Election Day. Supporters of Trump have seized on the dossier as a way to try to discredit the Russia inquiry.
The battle lasted even through the senator’s death. McCain made it clear that Trump was not welcome at his memorial service.
And over the weekend, the tensions surfaced again, as McCain supporters denounced the president’s tweets – and, in many cases, the president himself.
Mike Murphy, another political adviser to McCain and critic of the president, said: “McCain was a hero. Trump is a whimpering coward. He was afraid to go to Vietnam 47 years ago and is afraid to face the legal consequences of his actions today.”
“He just has no empathy,” Murphy said. “He’s only concerned with himself.”
Mark Salter, one of McCain’s closest advisers and co-author of several books with him, was even more biting.
“Here is what will never change,” Salter said in a tweet. “John McCain will always be a better man than you in every way we measure a man’s character. You’ll never beat him.”