Sen. John McCain provided some insight Monday into whom he might vote for president on Nov. 8, now that he isn’t supporting Donald Trump anymore.
During a debate Monday evening in Phoenix, Ariz., in which the Republican incumbent faced off against Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, McCain revealed he just might write in a friend of his in the Senate.
“I think I might write in Lindsey Graham,” McCain replied, referring to his fellow senator and former Republican presidential candidate. “He’s an old, good friend of mine and a lot of people like him,” he added with a smile.
The remark may have been more tongue-in-cheek than serious, but McCain did endorse and campaign for the South Carolina senator before he ended his run in December of 2015.
McCain is in the middle of a fight to get re-elected for a sixth Senate term, but his previous support of Republican nominee Donald Trump might come back to haunt him. The 2008 Republican presidential nominee withdrew his support of GOP nominee Donald Trump this weekend after a video surfaced Friday in which Trump can be heard making lewd comments about women in 2005.
Though Kirkpatrick was quick to jump on McCain for getting behind a candidate who has insulted a Gold Star family, a disabled reporter and veterans suffering from PTSD, McCain said he has “not been shy” about publicly disagreeing with Trump, while still supporting him.
“But,” he said, “when Mr. Trump attacks women and demeans the women in our nation and in our society that is a point where I just have to part company.”
“I worry about the future of the Republican Party,” he added later.
McCain also slammed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, whom he says, with her lies about the Benghazi attack, has “disqualified herself to be president of the United States.”
