Jimmy McCain, the son of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has called out Donald Trump for using his recent Arlington National Cemetery visit to campaign — something that is in violation of the military cemetery’s rules and has been at the center of a major controversy over the past week.
According to a Tuesday report from CNN, Jimmy McCain said the 2024 presidential candidate’s conduct at the Virginia site “just blows me away.”
“These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice” of whether to participate in a political campaign, said McCain, who has served in the military for 17 years.
The controversy surrounding Trump’s Aug. 26 visit unfolded after NPR reported that some of his aides got into a verbal and physical altercation with a cemetery employee, who’d tried to stop the campaign from taking photos or videos among the recently buried veterans. Trump’s camp has denied any altercation, described the cemetery employee as “suffering from a mental health episode” and stated that it was allowed a photographer during the visit.
Two days after the incident, Trump posted a TikTok video of his cemetery visit with clear political intent. The footage showed the GOP nominee walking among graves as audio played of him denouncing Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential administration.
“It was a violation,” McCain said of Trump posing near gravestones, telling CNN that he registered as a Democrat weeks ago. “That mother, that sister, those families, see that — and it’s a painful experience.”
The debacle showed that Trump doesn’t understand what it means to serve one’s country, suggested McCain, who has relatives buried at the Virginia cemetery.
“I just think that for anyone who’s done a lot of time in their uniform, they just understand that inherently — that it’s not about you there. It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country,” he said.
“Many of these men and women, who served their country, chose to do something greater than themselves,” he added. “They woke up one morning, they signed on the dotted line, they put their right hand up, and they chose to serve their country. And that’s an experience that Donald Trump has not had. And I think that might be something that he thinks about a lot.”
Trump denied using the cemetery visit to campaign during a rally Friday, saying he was simply honoring a Gold Star family’s request for a photo with him.
“I don’t need publicity. I get a lot of publicity,” he said. “I would like to get a lot less publicity. I would pay to get — I’m the only guy who would hire a public relations agent to get less publicity. Most hire to get publicity.”
In 2015, a month after launching what soon became a successful campaign for the White House, Trump made shocking comments about John McCain’s military career and time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said at the time. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you.”
He has never apologized for those remarks, which were widely condemned across the Republican Party.
Members of the McCain family have since spoken out against Trump, but Jimmy McCain is the first to publicly leave the GOP. He told CNN that he’s going to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in November and “would get involved in any way I could” to help her campaign.