Bridget McCain, the late Sen. Jon McCain’s youngest child, has publicly spoken out against President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on her father for the first time.
The 27-year-old has typically kept herself out of the public eye, both before and after her father died last August, but she tweeted two messages Thursday in which she tagged the President.
“Everyone doesn’t have to agree with my dad or like him, but I do ask you to be decent and respectful,” she wrote. Reminding the President that he was not invited to McCain’s funeral, she said, “Unfortunately, you could not be counted on to be courteous, as you are a child in the most important role the world knows.”
It was a big moment for Bridget, her sister Meghan said on ABC’s The View Thursday. “Anyone who knows anything about political history can probably surmise why she’s chosen to lead a very private life,” she said of Bridget, who was adopted from Bangladesh by John and Cindy McCain.
“But she felt inclined to say and tweet this.” McCain read her sister’s tweets aloud.
It was the second day in a row that Meghan McCain, a co-host on the show, stood up for her late father on the air.
“I don’t like coming here every day and having to do this, as all of you know,” she said during Thursday’s episode. “It’s extremely emotionally exhausting.”
The comments from McCain’s daughters, two of the senator’s seven children, come after multiple days of attacks by Trump. Over the weekend, the President called the late senator “last in his class” McCain. (He was actually fifth from the bottom, something that he liked to jokingly boast about later in life.)
On Tuesday, the President told reporters in the Oval Office, “I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.” The attacks continued Wednesday when the President visited an Ohio tank factory and criticized the McCain family’s reaction to the senator’s funeral. “I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president, I had to approve,” he said. “I didn’t get a thank you, but that’s OK.”
The President also claimed on Wednesday that McCain “didn’t get the job done” in his advocacy for war veterans. Fact-checkers disputed Trump’s assertion about McCain’s record on veterans.
Meghan McCain, who also regularly defended her father on social media and on TV while he was alive, said she has been comforted by the support she’s received amid the criticism from Trump.
“I don’t expect decency and compassion from the Trump family,” McCain said. “I do want to thank the public for the decency and compassion they’re giving us.”
McCain also encouraged viewers to “take this awful moment and do something positive” by donating to organizations that support veterans.
