Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he advised his daughter not to respond when Donald Trump called her “angry and obnoxious,” but rather to “move on.”
“I took offense and any father would,” McCain said on Neil Cavuto’s program on Fox News Wednesday evening. “The question is how do you respond to something like that … I talked to her about it, and my daughter Meghan, of whom I’m incredibly proud, we decided the best thing for her to do is move on,” McCain added.
Trump had an exchange with the younger McCain this month after she attacked him during a Sept. 4 appearance on Fox. “I question his capacity to stand up to the heat under fire,” she said. “To me [he] looks rookie … He might be the nominee going up against the previous secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. If he’s going up against her in a debate, some of these optics are going to be really lethal to the Republican Party,” she added.
Trump responded in a Twitter message the next day, writing, “Meghan McCain was terrible. Angry and obnoxious, she will never make it on T.V. Fox News can do so much better!”
Compared to the McCain family’s confrontations with Trump this year, the exchange has been tame. After Trump discounted Sen. McCain’s time as a prisoner of war, saying over the summer that he preferred people “who weren’t captured,” Meghan responded that it was “one of the grossest, most disgusting comments I’ve ever heard.”
Observers expected Trump’s poll numbers to drop after that incident in July. Instead, they increased from levels averaging just below 20 percent to more than 30 percent this month.
The 30-year-old McCain signed up to become a Fox News contributor this year. She also hosts a radio show on weekdays, and has gained a reputation for generally antagonizing the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
