John McCain’s wife says he would be ‘very pleased’ that Biden won the election
The wife of the late Republican Sen. John McCain says she thinks her husband would be “very pleased” with the results of the presidential election.
The Associated Press on Saturday named Joe Biden the projected winner of the presidential race after he secured Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College votes, which were enough to put him over the 270-vote threshold needed to win against President Donald Trump.
When asked what she thought about the outcome and what her late husband would think of it, Cindy McCain told CNN’s Anderson Cooper late Monday that she was “pleased.”
“As you know, we were good friends with the Bidens, and I just know he’s looking down and going, ‘You did the right thing,’” she said.
Cindy McCain endorsed Biden for president during his campaign and joined his transition advisory board.
“He supports the troops and knows what it means for someone who has served,” she told The Associated Press in September after endorsing Biden. “Not only to love someone who has served, but understands what it means to send a child into combat. We’ve been great friends for many years, but we have a common thread in that we are Blue Star families.”
John McCain represented Arizona — which went for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 — in the Senate starting in 1987. He won re-election five times. He also ran for president twice, winning his party’s nomination in 2008 before losing to former President Barack Obama in the general election.
Prior to his death in 2018, the long-time senator often spoke out against Trump and his policies. In 2017, he voted on the Senate floor against the administration’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
Trump lodged multiple attacks against McCain, including in 2015 when he said he didn’t think McCain was a “war hero” and that he likes “people that weren’t captured.”
McCain, who served as a Naval aviator, was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he was underwent severe torture.
“To millions of Americans, Mr. McCain was the embodiment of courage: a war hero who came home on crutches, psychologically scarred and broken in body, but not in spirit,” The New York Times wrote in his obituary.
John McCain’s 2008 concession speech — which has been praised for being among the most gracious in recent history — has resurfaced amid Trump’s refusal to concede to Biden.
CNN’s Cooper brought the speech up during his interview with Cindy McCain.
“I’m very grateful that you did replay that because I think that was a very important speech because it was a concession speech — but the manner in which it was given,” she said. “I really, truly hope that this president stays on the right side of history but, with all that said, does what’s right for the country.”
She also appeared on “The View” Monday and said she hopes Trump will concede.
“That’s what’s good for the country and also asking Republicans to do the same — to help support this president and a new administration and do what’s right for the country, not what’s right for our party,” she said.
