LOS ANGELES — Ignoring criticism over his soft-touch approach to Republicans, Joe Biden touted his relationship with the late John McCain at a closed-door fundraiser in the hills of Bel Air, California.
Biden, 77, shared memories of McCain after Harry Sloan, a media investor and studio executive who on Friday hosted the lunch of about 20 campaign supporters, recalled how McCain once said: “Joseph R. Biden is probably the finest man I have ever met.”
Sloan, 69, sits on the McCain Institute’s board of trustees, the body tasked with directing an organization set up in 2012 to continue the Arizona senator’s legacy. McCain died last year a few days shy of his 82nd birthday after a yearlong fight with brain cancer.
Biden on Friday reflected on his friendship with McCain, which sprung up after the former vice president and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate was elected to represent Delaware in the Senate in 1972. A few years later, McCain, a former naval aviator and Vietnam prisoner of war, became a congressional military attache to the Senate. The two friends later were briefly political foes when Biden became former President Barack Obama’s running mate, opposing McCain, who had won the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
Biden praised both McCain and 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, calling the latter, a former Massachusetts governor and now senator from Utah, “a man of honor and a decent man.”
Biden hasn’t hidden his warmth toward McCain on the campaign trail despite pressure to adopt a more antagonistic stance against Republicans during the primary.
The Biden campaign released a statement over the summer to mark the one-year anniversary of McCain death’s in August, with the White House hopeful describing him as a “genuine American hero.” Biden’s comments have been returned in kind by McCain’s wife Cindy, who has defended the Biden family amid the Ukraine scandal, and daughter Meghan McCain, who routinely offers advice via her TV show The View.
At the fundraiser on Friday, Biden also told donors a former British prime minister questioned whether the United States and the United Kingdom still had a special relationship, inviting him to the country to give an address. The Biden campaign did not immediately identify the prime minister.
