McCain and Trump are talking ‘defense stuff’

McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee that will hold hearings on retired Marine Gen. James Mattis’ nomination to lead the Defense Department, has spoken with Trump twice since the election. “We talked about nominations and people for jobs, particularly like Mattis,” McCain told the Washington Examiner on Thursday.

The conversations went “fine,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee said, despite the insults exchanged during the election cycle. “It was business.”

Does that mean McCain will work with Trump on foreign policy issues going forward? “I hope so,” he said. Discretion prevented the typically candid senator from providing any more details of their conversations. “I don’t discuss my discussions,” he said.

That will require a marked turnaround from their relationship during the campaign, when Trump mocked McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War and McCain said that Trump “alone should suffer consequences” for the comments about women that were revealed on the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. Even after the election, McCain pressured Trump about his more-idiosyncratic policy positions, such as support for water boarding and his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I don’t give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do,” McCain said Nov. 19. “We will not torture people … It doesn’t work.” The Arizona senator also warned Trump not to trust Putin after the Russian president congratulated Trump for his victory.

“We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America’s allies and attempted to undermine America’s elections,” McCain said.

McCain has chosen not to comment on Trump controversies of late, extending a tactic he adopted during his own re-election campaign. “My time is devoted to trying to make sure this nation is secured, not to comment on every comment of Mr. Trump’s,” McCain said Wednesday when reporters pressed him for answers in the Senate. “Now, that may be your priority, and yours and yours. That may be your priority to comment every day on any comment that Mr. Trump has. My priority is to try to defend the nation and the men and women who are serving it, and I cannot carry out that mission by responding to every comment of President-elect Trump’s.”

McCain is willing to compliment Trump’s efficiency in filling Cabinet slots, while acknowledging that a secretary of state hasn’t been chosen. “I’m told, except for this issue, that this president-elect is moving as rapidly as any of his predecessors,” McCain said, adding that he “like[s] a lot of” the candidates on Trump’s shortlist.

“I like Petraeus, I like Bolton, I like Romney,” he continued. “They haven’t asked me. They have asked me [for] input on the defense stuff.”