WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain has long had a reputation as a political maverick. But with the rise of a president who has vowed to shatter the old order, McCain has emerged as an outspoken defender of long-standing Republican verities on foreign policy and as one of his party’s most biting critics of the new commander in chief.
Newly re-elected to a six-year term and eager to wield the megaphone that comes with the chairmanship of the powerful Armed Services Committee, McCain has repeatedly pushed back on the White House’s national security policies in its first weeks.
In a star turn at a security conference in Munich on Friday, he delivered a forceful critique of President Donald Trump’s “America First” vision before a receptive audience of experts and allied officials worried about American drift from a seven-decade-old Western alliance.
“Make no mistake, my friends, these are dangerous times,” McCain said. “But you should not count America out, and we should not count each other out.”
Nor did McCain hesitate to puncture Trump’s insistence that his White House is operating like a “fine-tuned machine.” “In many respects, this administration is in disarray, and they’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.
A day later, in an interview for “Meet the Press,” McCain challenged Trump’s contention that the news media is “the enemy of the American people.” “The first thing that dictators do is shut down the press,” he said, adding that while he was not calling the president a dictator, “we need to learn the lessons of history.”
For a senator who supports free trade, backs NATO, remains deeply suspicious of Russian intentions and has favored an assertive foreign policy, including the war in Iraq, the differences with Trump have been profound.
“The principles that Senator McCain has espoused have animated American foreign policy for decades,” said Richard Fontaine, a former foreign policy adviser to McCain who serves as president of the Center for a New American Security, a policy research center. “It’s the political context in Washington that has changed.”
But there seems to be a personal element, too, particularly on the part of Trump. The tensions go back to the Republican primaries, when Trump offered a belittling rejoinder to McCain’s remark that the candidate’s immigration policies had attracted “crazies.”
“I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump said of McCain, 80, who was held for more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and was tortured while in captivity.
After Trump won the Republican nomination, McCain walked a fine line while campaigning for re-election. The senator did not attend the Republican National Convention but said he would back his party’s nominee. He then withdrew that support in October after a recording was disclosed in which Trump made lewd comments about women.
Immediately after Trump’s election, McCain held his fire and appeared determined to let the new administration take shape. “I will not talk about Donald Trump,” he said in November.
But after weeks in which the White House has blindsided the public, and sometimes much of the government, with executive orders and sent mixed messages on major foreign policy issues, McCain has let loose.
Denouncing Russia for “interfering” in the presidential election, McCain has called for the formation of a select Senate committee to investigate the Kremlin’s cyberactivities. He has also chastised Trump for a comment in which he seemed to equate the actions of President Vladimir Putin of Russia with those of the United States. “That moral equivalency is a contradiction of everything the United States has ever stood for in the 20th and 21st centuries,” McCain said on “Meet the Press.”
Along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., he has criticized Trump’s executive order on travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries as a “self-inflicted wound” that would alienate Muslim partners in the fight against extremists.
After reports surfaced that Trump had engaged in a heated phone call with Australia’s prime minister, McCain placed his own call to Joe Hockey, Australia’s ambassador to Washington, and then put out a statement noting that he had underscored “unwavering support for the U.S.-Australian alliance.”
McCain said Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a vast trade deal, “creates an opening for China.” He has also warned the White House against trying to use torture as an interrogation technique, pointing out that legislation he sponsored in 2015 made those techniques illegal.
And while he is a strong supporter of two retired Marine generals in the administration — Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, and John Kelly, the homeland security secretary — he was the lone Republican to vote against Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s pick for budget chief.
On the Senate floor, McCain said that Mulvaney had supported military spending cuts that seriously weakened the armed forces. McCain has also complained loudly about the role of Steve Bannon, the president’s chief political strategist, on the National Security Council.
All this blunt talk has not come without some pushback. This month, Trump blasted McCain for his criticism of a risky special operations raid in Yemen in which a Navy SEAL was killed. “He’s been losing so long he doesn’t know how to win anymore,” Trump said on Twitter.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said on Sunday that McCain had a “personal dispute” with Trump and criticized what he called the senator’s eagerness to use military force. “I would say John McCain has been wrong on just about everything over the last four decades,” Paul said on the ABC News program “This Week.” “We’re very lucky John McCain’s not in charge because I think we’d be in perpetual war.”
If the opening month of the administration is any indication, there may be perpetual conflict — between senator and president.
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