Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas criticized President Trump this week for criticizing the late Sen. John McCain as he toured a tank manufacturing plant.
“I disagree with the POTUS standing in front of M1A1 Abram tanks & the American flag and spending time trashing POW veteran and former US Senator McCain, and as Commander-in-Chief characterizing our time fighting in the Middle East as an unqualified disaster,” Roy, a freshman House lawmaker, tweeted late Wednesday.
THREAD – I disagree with the POTUS standing in front of M1A1 Abram tanks & the American flag and spending time trashing POW veteran and former US Senator McCain, and as Commander-in-Chief characterizing our time fighting in the Middle East as an unqualified disaster. 1/x
— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) March 21, 2019
While Roy said he disagreed with McCain on many issues and said U.S. strategy in the Middle East should be reconsidered, he claimed “words matter to the heroes who have bled the ground red and accomplished much in the process.”
“I have stood by the President and will continue to do so when it comes to policies that will secure the border, drain the swamp, restore fiscal sanity, and establish healthcare freedom,” Roy tweeted. “But I see only harm and no benefit in looking backward.”
“Our border remains unsecure. Our debt mounts at $100 million per hour,” Roy said. “Our healthcare remains too expensive and burdensome. Our military remains stretched thin and in need of clarity of mission. Let’s move on.”
Roy’s comments came on the same day that Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia said Trump’s criticism of McCain “drives me crazy.”
[Opinion: I have always been a fan of John McCain, and always will be]
After slamming the late Arizona senator on Twitter over the weekend and in the Oval Office Tuesday, Trump went after McCain again on Wednesday for voting for the Iraq War in 2002 and supporting a troop surge in 2007.
“I have to be honest, I’ve never liked him much,” Trump said during a speech at an Ohio tank manufacturing plant Wednesday.
“We’re in a war in the Middle East that McCain pushed so hard. He was calling Bush, President Bush all the time — ‘get into the Middle East, get into the Middle East’ — and so now we are into that war $7 trillion, thousands and thousands of our people have been killed, millions of people overall,” Trump said. “And frankly we are straightening it out now, but it has been a disaster for our country. we’ve spent tremendous wealth and tremendous lives in that war and what do we have? It’s worse than it was 19 years ago. I call them the endless wars. John McCain loved it.”
McCain, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958 and was a naval aviator and prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, died in August 2018 from brain cancer.
