President Trump issued a warning to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) following a speech that indirectly called out the president and certain admirers of his administration.
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Speaking with Chris Plante of WMAL radio, Trump said, “People have to be careful because at some point I fight back.” Trump made his comments in reference to an acceptance speech McCain gave on Monday while receiving the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal from friend and former Vice President Joe Biden.
McCain criticized “half-baked, spurious nationalism,” appearing to address Trump’s foreign policy:
To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of Earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems, is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.
“We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil,” McCain added, likely in reference to a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that occurred in August. “Blood and soil” is a rallying cry for certain white nationalist groups and is a callback to Nazi ideology.
This is certainly not the first time Trump and McCain have found themselves in a feud. Trump once stated that he liked veterans “who weren’t captured,” dismissing McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in the Vietnam War. McCain also publicly spoke out against Trump’s desire to torture suspected terrorists, among his many other disagreements with the president.
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Deeply humbled to receive @ConstitutionCtr's 2017 #LibertyMedal from my dear friend @JoeBiden. Thank you for this great honor. pic.twitter.com/iNypjDAiQM
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) October 17, 2017