John McCain’s Role in America’s Biggest Political Scandal

President Barack Obama and Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the Domestic Policy Council, talk with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in the Outer Oval Office, July 11, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

One of Trump’s most powerful foes on Capitol Hill – Senator John McCain – worked with Democratic schemers to discredit President Trump’s election.

On 14 March, on order by a Florida district court, David Kramer, a close associate of McCain’s, revealed how Kramer and McCain distributed the infamous Steele dossier to the media, the FBI, and Republican lawmakers after the November 2016 election, Julie Kelly reports in American Greatness.

Part of the story is the handling by McCain and Kramer of the still-unverified dossier by Christopher Steele, a British political operative. But that is just a part of the story. Glenn Simpson, a Washington consultant paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, peddled the dossier, explains Ms. Kelly.

McCain continued to ratchet up Trump-Russia hysteria after the election, as I wrote earlier this week. During a Senate hearing in June 2017, a clearly agitated McCain asked former FBI Director James Comey if he was aware that the Russians had information “that could coerce members of the administration or blackmail members of the administration?” Comey said he could not answer the question.

Fueling Bogus Suspicions about Trump-Russia Collusion

For rank-and-file Republicans closely monitoring how the Obama Justice Department weaponized federal powers in order to infiltrate the Trump campaign then fueled bogus suspicions about Trump-Russia election collusion after Trump won, this was another gut punch. McCain was defiant and vague about his role before his death in August 2018.

McCain Attempted to Sabotage Trump

But now it’s clear that a respected senator who accepted the support of tens of millions of Republican voters in 2008 during his losing bid for president betrayed many of those very same voters by attempting to sabotage Donald Trump.

It was the latest blow to McCain’s legacy in the GOP; before his death, he was far more popular with Democrats than with Republicans. In August 2018, McCain only had a 41 percent favorability rating among Republicans while 49 percent held an unfavorable view of the six-term senator, largely based on his strong opposition to Trump and his deciding vote on Obamacare repeal in 2017.

Blinded by Hate

Fortunately, thanks to online journals like American Greatness and to numerous social media accounts with hundreds of thousands of combined followers, the actual facts about the dossier, the media’s complicity in its legitimization, and now, McCain’s post-election chicanery with it, are readily available for people who aren’t blinded by Trump hate or averse to reality. (According to Kramer’s testimony, McCain gave Comey the dossier in December 2016.)

Trump’s Anger Real and Justified

Trump may be muddying his own message with irrelevant remarks about McCain’s funeral, but his anger is real and justified. And it’s not just that the media, Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans don’t understand it. It’s that, as has been their collective pattern for nearly three years, they refuse to acknowledge any facet of the biggest political scandal in American history—largely because to some degree, they played a part in it or, at a minimum, they wish it we’re true.

Read more here.