Trump promises ‘fight’ after McCain slams ‘spurious nationalism’
Oct 17, 2017, 11:00 AM | Updated: Mar 1, 2018, 3:42 pm
(AP Photos)
PHOENIX — The morning after Arizona Sen. John McCain called the country’s foreign policy “half-baked, spurious nationalism,” President Donald Trump fired back in a radio interview, saying, “people have to be careful because at some point I fight back.”
Trump made the comments to WMAL in Washington on Tuesday. He added, “I’m being very, very nice but at some point I fight back and it won’t be pretty.”
McCain told reporters on Capitol Hill a short while later, “It’s fine with me. “I’ve faced some fairly significant adversaries in the past.”
The 81-year-old Republican has been fighting brain cancer since summer and survived nearly six years in a POW camp after his bomber was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967.
During a ceremony Monday in Philadelphia honoring McCain with the Liberty Medal for a lifetime of service and sacrifice to the country, the multiple-term legislator again criticized current foreign policy.
“To abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history,” McCain said.
“We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil.”
The senator said those remarks were not directed specifically at Trump.
Politico reported McCain said he was “referring to the whole atmosphere and environment (of ‘America First’),” then added, “a whole lot of people besides the president who have said ‘America First.'”
McCain and Trump have been at odds since the president’s election campaign. The head-butting has continued over Russia, the GOP health care bill and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Syria, among several topics.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.