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John McCain is one of only a few Republicans to publicly speak out against President Donald Trump and the policies he hopes to execute. On Friday, McCain kept up the pressure without ever speaking the President’s name during a scathing speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
The Republican senator from Arizona blasted President Trump’s views on everything from NATO to foreign policy to immigration. He told the German founders of the international conference, who know a thing or two about authoritarian dictators, that they would be disturbed by the direction in which the new U.S. administration appears to be heading.
“I fear that much about it would be all-too-familiar to them, and they would be alarmed by it. They would be alarmed by an increasing turn away from universal values and toward old ties of blood, and race and sectarianism,” McCain said.
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“They would be alarmed by the hardening resentment we see toward immigrants, and refugees, and minority groups, especially Muslims. They would be alarmed by the growing inability, and even unwillingness to separate truth from lies. They would be alarmed that more and more of our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticizing it as our moral equivalent.”
McCain connected the surge in far-right populism across the world with fear instilled by ISIS and other extremist groups. Again, without saying Trump’s name, he took a jab at the President’s chummy attitude toward Russian president Vladimir Putin and Trump’s deliberate attacks on long-held international agreements like NATO.
McCain suggested that the democratic Western world is being severely tested — and he wondered if it will prevail. He said some of the President’s most senior advisers tout very different world views than America has previously held.
“What would alarm them most, I think, is a sense that many of our peoples, including in my own country, are giving up on the West,” McCain said. “While Western nations still have the power to maintain our world order, it is unclear whether we have the will.”
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He continued: “I can only speak for myself, but I do not believe that that is the message you will hear from all of the American leaders who cared enough to travel here to Munich this weekend,” he said. “That’s not the message you heard today from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. That is not the message you will hear from Vice President Mike Pence. That’s not the message you will hear from Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. And that is certainly not the message you will hear tomorrow from our bipartisan congressional delegation.”
McCain said President Trump’s behavior plays into the hands of those who want to see the West weakened.
“I refuse to accept that our values are morally equivalent to those of our adversaries,” McCain said. “I am a proud, unapologetic believer in the West, and I believe we must always, always stand up for it. For if we do not who will?”
