John Sidney McCain III, the maverick Republican who twice sought the presidency and served in the Senate for more than three decades after surviving brutal captivity during the Vietnam War, died Saturday after battling brain cancer. He was 81.

“Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28pm on August 25, 2018. With the Senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years,” the family said in a statement.

A public figure for nearly 40 years, Sen. McCain left an indelible mark on the nation during a long and sometimes polarizing political career marked by an aggressive military posture as the United States fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the final few years of his life, the senator clashed sharply with President Trump, who said early in the 2016 presidential campaign that McCain, widely celebrated for his tenacity as a prisoner of war, was not a war hero.


McCain first arrived on the national stage as a POW after his plane was shot down over Hanoi in 1967. A few months earlier, McCain, then a Navy pilot, had survived a deadly fire on the USS Forrestal, an aircraft carrier.

In 1982, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Four years later, he won his seat in the Senate. In the upper chamber of Congress, McCain established himself as a leading voice on national security and foreign policy, particularly from his chairmanship of the powerful Armed Services Committee.

He also cultivated a reputation as an independent willing to work with Democrats on immigration and campaign finance. McCain was a fierce critic of Russia and a strong proponent of an aggressive U.S. role against the Islamic State extremist group.

While he had the respect of many GOP leaders, Trump criticized him personally in 2015, shocking political observers. Then a candidate for president, Trump said McCain was not a war hero because he was captured by the North Vietnamese. “I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump said at the time.

The two men also were at odds over policy. Last fall, McCain offered a sharp, if veiled critique of Trump, saying in a speech that “some half-baked, spurious nationalism” should be considered “as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

Earlier this year, McCain came out against Trump’s nominee for director of the Central Intelligence Agency. McCain said Gina Haspel had not adequately explained her involvement, during the George W. Bush administration, in a controversial “enhanced” interrogation program that he and other critics said amounted to torture. Haspel was confirmed by the Senate nevertheless.


McCain spoke from experience. He was held for more than five years in a Hanoi prison, where he was tortured and often deprived of sleep and food.

The son and grandson of Navy admirals, he was offered early release by his captors but refused to go home before the other POWs.

His opposition to Haspel drew a crass response from Kelly Sadler, a White House communications official, who dismissed the senator’s rejection of the nominee, saying, “It doesn’t matter; he’s dying, anyway,” according to The Washington Post and other media outlets.

In the summer of 2017, Sen. McCain was diagnosed with a tumor called a glioblastoma, which is an aggressive type of brain cancer.

He returned to the Senate after his diagnosis and cast a pivotal vote against a Republican bill to undo the Affordable Care Act. During a post-midnight roll call on the Senate floor, he turned his thumb down and effectively thwarted one of the GOP’s signature promises of recent years.

After leaving Washington in December, he never returned to the Senate. As he underwent treatment in Arizona, he kept a low profile, issuing written statements on major news developments but offering the public few glimpses of his condition.

McCain collaborated with a longtime adviser, Mark Salter, on a memoir, “The Restless Wave,” that was released in May.

Among other things, the book captured McCain’s difficult relationship with Trump. The president, he wrote, “has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones.”


He also remarked that,” The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values.”

McCain ran for president in 2000, losing the Republican nomination to the eventual 43rd president, George W. Bush. Eight years later, he ran again, this time winning his party’s nomination but losing the general election to Barack Obama.

McCain struggled against strong head winds in a banner year for Democrats. Obama and his party scored major victories as voters vented their anger and anxiety over the Iraq War and a struggling economy.

The Arizona senator selected then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the party’s vice-presidential nominee, a controversial choice that would become one of the defining decisions of his career.

Two years after running for president, he sought reelection to the Senate. The conservative tea party movement was on the rise in 2010, and McCain tacked to the right to survive a contested primary.

In one controversial campaign commercial, Sen. McCain talked about the need to “complete the danged fence” to address concerns about undocumented immigrants crossing the nation’s southern border.

In 2013, McCain moved back to the middle on immigration. He joined the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators who proposed a sweeping rewrite of immigration laws that included a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

The bill passed the Republican-controlled Senate but went nowhere in the Republican-controlled House.

The senator is survived by his mother, Roberta; his wife, Cindy; two sons and a daughter from a first marriage, Douglas, Andrew and Sidney; four children from his second marriage, Meghan McCain, Jimmy McCain Jack McCain and Bridget McCain; a brother, Joseph P. McCain of Washington; a sister, Jean Alexandra McCain Morgan of Annapolis; and five grandchildren.


McCain’s death opens up a Senate seat that party leaders expect to remain in Republican hands for two more years, as the GOP clings to a narrow majority in the upper chamber of Congress.

Under state law, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey will appoint a successor. Among the list of potential appointees are McCain’s wife, Cindy; Ducey’s chief of staff, Kirk Adams; state Treasurer Eileen Klein; former congressman John Shadegg; and former U.S. senator Jon Kyl. State law says the appointee must be from the same party as the person vacating the seat.

Because McCain died after the deadline to file for this year’s election, the new senator will not have to face voters until the 2020 election.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.was...freshcontent=1



Fuark brahs this one stung, not going to lie. Such a class act. Will dedicate a set to him later. (Jk i dont lift right now)

Rip

I loved him in Die Hard. RIP.

too soon junior

rip

Rip

And his family and him decided to stop taking meds yesterday....
Dam thou

Not many in the GOP will miss McCain. The democrats only liked him when he was interfering with GOP legislation. The minute he ran for POTUS, the democrats turned on him and tried to tar him as a racist/sexist/nazi/homophobe like they try to do to every other GOP candidate.

In the end, by his own actions, McCain leaves the stage with very few admirers.

He went to Washington as an outsider and ended up as a swamp critter.

If you think my judgement is harsh, you should hear what his fellow Vietnam veterans have to say about him.

I didn't have any respect for him in recent years, but he was a successful American. Rest easy.

Not to mention the Forrestal fire.

ETA: The Keating five.

Be careful, a certain mod is negging in this thread for comments she doesn't like.

Edit: I stand by what I wrote. It was written dispassionately. There were no ad hominems. This is The Misc, not the Washington Post obituary page. McCain did many devious things to undermine the party that supported him. And yet, they still nominated him in 2008. Many of us held our noses and voted for him. But, his involvement in this phony "pee dossier" that was the so-called justification for the deep state to start investigating Trump in 2016 was just too much. On top of everything else he did to help the democrats over the years, I just won't look the other way anymore.

Great, mod negged for the truth.

Thanks bro

old man dies from being old and long battle with cancer..... cool story bro, world moves on completely the same. Anthony bourdain is the real celebrity tragedy loss of the decade.

I wasn't a fan of his politically, but he was definitely an American icon and served selflessly in Vietnam and will be missed.

Lol wut.

War Hero who served his country. Long standing US senator and presidential front runner.

RIP to an honorable man.

He had a good run

don't know why death at an old age has to be sad lol (unless of course you're related and even then..)

RIP. surviving what he had to endure in vietnam deserves all my respect and anything he did after doesn't change that.

rip

You summed up my thoughts and those of every informed American.

If you liked McCain at best youre out of the loop. At worst youre clinically retarded. Hes one of the worst politicians since Nixon.

RIP

ive had mad respect for him since i heard he got tortured to the point of not being able to raise his arms over his head anymore

They called him song bird McCain. The man did ALOT of harm to this countrys citizens, throughout his entire life. That being said iam sorry he passed cancer sucks.

and it's a mod neg, not a government assassination of a journalist. relax with your essays

Maybe McCain was what a true politician should be and voted for what he believed in and not what the GOP says too

I love politicians who dont ride the nuts of their political party. That is whats wrong with America today, there are no more independent thinkers just a bunch of right and left sheep.

RIP McCain.

Not sure if srs. Like him or not he was an American icon...some might say hero. He dedicated his entire life (Naval Academy to Vietnam to his time in the Senate) to his country. He should be remembered at the very least.

Damn it I just turned green again..

RIP to a man who fought for his country and wrote a blank check to it. Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that unlike most elected politicians, he put his health and life on the line for his country whereas many of them haven’t.

2008 was unwinnable for the Republican Party. In that sense, he sort of took one for the team even just running.

The Palin choice was, on paper, a good idea. She was fresh, new, conservative and offered the GOP a claim to identity politique points in a year when the Democrats were playing the minority card heavily. It isn’t his fault that Palin refused to do her homework and made herself look bad.

Unpopular opinion: The world is better off without him.
He was a neocon warmonger that profited off of interventionism and the deaths of millions of people.

He was always a strong voice in favor of more war and death, all for the sake of personal gain.

If you think McCain took a stance on anything because of his “morals” then I got some bad news.

Do you know what lobbyists are?