Free Republic

Joe Biden gifted $83 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds to Arizona State University (ASU) for the construction of a library honoring the late centrist Senator John McCain. The library will serve as the anchor to ASU’s future McCain Campus. The funds came from the American Rescue Plan, which was originally promised as a means of “delivering direct relief to the American people,” who sustained lasting financial and emotional strains endured by the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Capital Projects Fund under the American Rescue Plan will issue the funding. The $83 million is part of the $10...

Usually I’m reluctant to put words in the mouth of my late employer, Senator John McCain, other than those he instructed me to write at some point during our long association. Yet since his death I have so missed not only his company, but his voice in our national affairs, that I have at times been tempted to conjure it from my knowledge of the values and views that animated his distinctive appeals to Americans and the world. I wanted to hear him during President Donald Trump’s two impeachment trials. I wanted to hear him react to the travesty of...

Steve Schmidt, cofounder of the disgraced Lincoln Project and former presidential campaign manager for the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), admitted Friday that he did not actually vote for McCain in the 2008 election, won by Barack Obama.

GOP Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) on Friday said that if President Trump isn't prepared to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin "accountable" for aggression toward the U.S. then he should cancel their meeting next week. "President Trump must be willing to confront Putin from a position of strength and demonstrate that there will be a serious price to pay for his ongoing aggression towards the United States and democracies around the world. If President Trump is not prepared to hold Putin accountable, the summit in Helsinki should not move forward," McCain said in a statement.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced his decision to retire from the Senate rather than seek re-election in 2018, citing the new tone and political values that President Donald Trump brought to Washington, DC, as the reason. “When the next generation asks us, ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up?’ What are we going to say?” Flake said sorrowfully as he stood up in the Senate for his announcement. “Mr. President, I rise today to say, enough.” Flake said that he no longer could serve as a conservative in a party that no longer valued free trade or...

Perpetual GOP malcontent Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called lawmakers “stupid” who believed invoking the so-called “nuclear option” to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court would ultimately improve the Senate, during a gaggle with reporters Tuesday. The Arizona senator was prompted Tuesday by an unidentified reporter to react to individuals who say “the Senate will be a better place” after the nuclear option is invoked. “I would like to meet that idiot,” McCain fired back, “I would like to meet that numbskull that would say that, that after 200 years — at least 100 years — of this tradition...

The world "cries out for American and European leadership" through the EU and Nato, US senator John McCain said on Friday (24 March). In a "new world order under enormous strain" and in "the titanic struggle with forces of radicalism … we can't stand by and lament, we've got to be involved," said McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate who is now chairman of the armed services committee in the US Senate. Speaking at the Brussels Forum, a conference organised by the German Marshall Fund, a transatlantic think tank, he said that the EU and the US needed to develop...

The long-simmering war between Sens. John McCain and Rand Paul boiled over on Wednesday when the Arizona lawmaker directly accused his colleague of working for Russian President Vladimir Putin. While speaking from the Senate floor in support of a bill advancing Montenegro’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), McCain noted objection from his Kentucky colleague, saying that if you oppose the measure, “You are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin... trying to dismember this small country which has already been the subject an attempted coup.” Several moments later, after the 80-year-old senator asked for unanimous consent to...

The maverick is back. Sen. John McCain once again is basking in the media spotlight as the go-to Republican on Capitol Hill for voicing opposition to the Republican in the White House. This time, he’s bucking President Trump and doing it with newfound vim. In Mr. Trump’s first two weeks in office, Mr. McCain broke with him over the decision to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, said his proposed import tax on U.S. businesses relocated to Mexico was “insane” and took the lead in raising alarm about the reorganization of the National Security Council. He also found a reason...

Donald Trump might be unwilling to support Arizona Sen. John McCain's re-election bid, but Ohio Gov. John Kasich thinks McCain deserves a lifetime appointment to the Senate. "Honestly, I don't even think they ought to have an election. They ought to tell McCain, as long as you want to be in the Senate, you can have it," Kasich told WGN radio. "He's just the greatest guy."

The GOP's 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, says the 2016 campaign is like none other because candidates in both parties are tapping into the "frustration and anger" of voters.[snip] "You see a frustration and anger which then rejects the establishment," he added. "[Sen. Ted] Cruz has tapped into it, [Vermont Sen. Bernie] Sanders has tapped into it, [Donald] Trump…" "Anybody that says he can shoot somebody and still get elected, that's beyond any framework of politics that I've ever seen," the Arizona lawmaker said, USA Today reports.

Publicly, John McCain insists Donald Trump will have a negligible effect on his campaign for reelection. But behind closed doors at a fundraiser in Arizona last month, the Republican senator and two-time presidential hopeful offered a far more dire assessment to his supporters. “If Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, here in Arizona, with over 30 percent of the vote being the Hispanic vote, no doubt that this may be the race of my life,” McCain said, according to a recording of the event obtained by POLITICO. “If you listen or watch Hispanic media in the state...

-snip- One "Amigo" is in the Bush camp -- and another is being courted. Sen. Lindsey Graham endorsed Jeb Bush this past week, calling him best-prepared among the Republican candidates to be commander in chief. Graham's own presidential campaign didn't get very far, but Bush is hoping his endorsement helps in the senator's home state of South Carolina. And now, the former Florida governor is trying to enlist Graham's help in winning another high profile endorsement: that of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain. McCain, of course, was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, and traveled often with Graham and then-Sen. Joseph...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., says his Senate colleague Ted Cruz is the Republican presidential hopeful with whom he has the sharpest disagreement and singled out the Texan’s vote against the National Defense Authorization Act as the chief reason. During a discussion of this year’s 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls, Newsmax asked McCain which three he felt had the best records on national security and which three had the worst. “I don’t like to duck a question,” he replied, with a laugh, and restated his support for South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham....

LITTLETON, N.H. — Former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) was in his element Saturday — giving hugs, posing for pictures and shaking hands beside an oversized picnic pavilion at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post here in Littleton. He was asking Granite Staters for their votes in the first-in-the-nation primary. But this time, not for himself. “Lindsey Graham, he’s my man!” McCain declared with a chuckle,...

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says Donald Trump's comment that Sen. John McCain is not a war hero should disqualify him from the 2016 presidential race. "It's not just absurd, it's offensive. It's ridiculous. And I do think it's a disqualifier as commander-in-chief," Rubio said in an interview Sunday with CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." The Florida senator was the latest Republican White House contender to hit Trump after the real estate mogul said Saturday that McCain "is not a war hero" because he was captured and held prisoner in Vietnam. "He is a war hero because he...

The Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) has launched an effort to defeat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), bashing him for failing to uphold the principles of a “true conservative” just hours after he announced his intention to run for reelection. “There are few Republicans who have betrayed our conservative principles more than John McCain,” SCF President Ken Cuccinelli said in an email to supporters Tuesday of the party's 2008 nominee for president. “John McCain lost his way a long time ago and it's time to replace him with a strong conservative leader who will support and defend the Constitution.” Cuccinelli’s email links...

The Obama Administration lied last year when they informed Congress and the public that the 2,200 people that the Administration released from incarceration to save money had only minor criminal records. USA TODAY, gaining the data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of information Act, reports that some of the illegal immigrants had been charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking, and homicide.

Sen. John McCain suggested Sunday that President Obama should nominate an Ebola czar to lead the nation’s response to the deadly virus. “From spending time here in Arizona, my constituents are not comforted. There has to be more reassurance given to them,” the Arizona Republican said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham is thinking about running for president. Graham told The Weekly Standard in a lengthy interview that he isn’t crazy about other potential Republican candidates’ positions, and that he’s been encouraged by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to consider entering the race for the GOP presidential nomination. “I’ve strongly encouraged him to give it a look,” McCain told the Standard. “I think Lindsey has vast and deep experience on these issues that very few others have. I happen to like a lot of these guys—I like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie. Ted Cruz has gone out of...