Cindy McCain says she will never forgive President Trump for saying her late husband, Sen. John McCain, was not a war hero because he was captured.
“I thought it was inappropriate and wrong,” McCain told the BBC in an interview Wednesday. “I think that was a wrong thing to say. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it, to be honest.”
[Meghan McCain: ‘I’m never going to forgive’ Trump and his administration for attacking my father]
Early in his presidential campaign, Trump chided the Republican senator from Arizona by saying, “I like people who weren’t captured.”
The former Navy pilot spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison where he was tortured during the war.
Their contentious relationship continued up until the senator’s death in August, when the president was notably absent from McCain’s funeral. The event included eulogies by the two men who beat McCain for the presidency — 2000 primary rival George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee to whom McCain lost in the general election.
“Even though it was a very public funeral, we are still a family. For all of us, for the sake of my own children, I didn’t want any disruption,” Cindy McCain said. “It was important to me that we kept it respectful and calm.”
She said she’s also unsure whether she’ll vote for Trump in the 2020 election.
“I don’t even know if he’s going to run,” she said. “I can’t answer that right now. … At this point, I’d like to see some softening of the rhetoric.”
