Jimmy McCain, the youngest son of the late Senator John McCain and an army intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment, recently endorsed Kamala Harris for president on Wednesday, accusing Trump of using the graves in Arlington, Virginia, as a “backdrop for a political campaign.”
Several MAGA-affiliated accounts online pointed out that in 1999, during John McCain’s campaign for president, the Arizona Senator released an advert detailing the military service of his father, his grandfather, and himself, which featured a 2-second clip of him walking through Arlington cemetery.
The ad talks about how McCain’s father and grandfather are both buried at Arlington, and about how McCain was held and tortured as a prisoner of war for five and a half years during the Vietnam War.
Prominent MAGA activist Jack Posobiec reposted MacCain’s ad on X, originally posted by user @RobProvince, writing “Be a shame if this went viral”
Cindy McCain and her son Jimmy McCain at John McCain’s funeral in Washington D.C., September 1, 2018. MAGA influencers have accused Jimmy McCain of hypocrisy for criticizing Donald Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery campaign video.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Another prominent MAGA influencer, Collin Rugg, pointed out the irony, reposting the video and garnering over 639,600 views by Tuesday morning. “Will Jimmy be condemning his father?” Rugg asked.
Several other well-known MAGA-affiliated Twitter accounts replied to Rugg including Gunther Eagleman, who wrote: “The entire McCain family is trash…?” Charlie Kirk wrote: “This is hilarious. Also, who cares who John McCain’s son is going to vote for?”
The controversy comes after Trump attended a memorial service at the Arlington National Cemetery last week.
His campaign staff and an Arlington staff member reportedly got into an altercation when the latter tried to prevent them from taking photographs and video footage inside Section 60, a section of the Cemetery reserved for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump’s campaign later accused the staff member of being a “despicable individual” who was having a “suffering from a mental health episode,” leading to the U.S. Army publicly rebuking Trump’s campaign and defending its staff member.
The Army said the Trump’s campaign violated federal law, because partisan activities are banned at Arlington, and said the staff member declined to press charges because she feared retaliation from Trump’s supporters.
The campaign released a TikTok video using the footage, and Trump was photographed giving a thumbs up at a grave site. Both have faced heavy criticism from veterans for being disrespectful.
In 1999, McCain too faced backlash from the Army and the public for his Arlington ad. He admitted he erred and removed the two seconds of footage from the ad.
The Army had previously released a statement saying McCain had not asked permission to film at the cemetery and that any request to do so would have been denied because partisan activity is banned at Army installations.
Trump, meanwhile, has doubled down, insisting in a Tuesday Truth Social post that “there was no conflict” at the cemetery and that “it was a made-up story by Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad,” despite his own campaign spokespeople discussing the situation with Newsweek last week.
He has also rebuked the criticism that he should not have taken photographs, saying that he did so because the families asked him to.
Trump publicly insulted McCain, a two-time presidential candidate and six-term Republican Senator, repeatedly during his 2016 campaign and his presidency including saying in 2015 McCain was “not a war hero“, and in 2019 saying “I never liked him much and I probably never will.”
Trump did not attend McCain’s funeral in 2018. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were invited to deliver eulogies, while future president Joe Biden delivered an emotional eulogy at a private memorial service in Arizona.
