The youngest son of late Sen. John McCain on Tuesday slammed Donald Trump’s political appearance at Arlington National Cemetery and revealed he has become a Democrat who plans to vote for Kamala Harris.
“It was a violation,” Jimmy McCain told CNN of Trump’s actions at Arlington, where several generations of his family are buried and where partisan political activity is banned.
McCain, who joined the Marine Corps at 17 and has served in the military for seventeen years, recently returned from a monthslong deployment to a small base at the Jordan-Syria border.
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“It just blows me away,” McCain said of Trump’s decision to use the cemetery as a backdrop for campaign content. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice.”
Campaign activity is prohibited on U.S. military installations, including at the Army’s Arlington National Cemetery, where an Army spokesman says a Trump campaign aide pushed an employee of the cemetery who was trying to enforce the rules. Ironically, John McCain apologized for violating the same rule with an ad for his failed 2000 presidential campaign that featured a snippet of himself walking through the 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,” Jimmy McCain told CNN. “It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country.”
McCain, who has been a registered independent for several years, also said he registered as a Democrat weeks ago and will vote for Harris in November. He added that he “would get involved in any way I could” to help her campaign.
The son of Cindy McCain and the brother of Meghan McCain, the youngest McCain is the first member of his family to defect from the GOP, a decision he said was partly motivated by Trump’s disrespect for fallen soldiers.
His sister tweeted Tuesday that she will not be joining in her brother's defection from the family's conservatve roots.
Jimmy McCain, who now serves as an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment, also addressed Trump's attacks on his father as "not a war hero" because he was captured in Vietnam, telling CNN: “One thing about John McCain is that he chose a public life. So to attack him is really not out of the realm of his job description.”
“Many of these men and women, who served their country, chose to do something greater than themselves,” McCain said. “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.”
