John Shinkle/POLITICO McCain: Trump 'fired up the crazies'

Donald Trump “fired up the crazies” in his state when he held a rally in Phoenix last weekend, Arizona Sen. John McCain said in a recent interview. During that appearance (and others last weekend), Trump was joined by the father of Jamiel Shaw, who was killed by an undocumented immigrant.

Trump has tapped into “some anger” in the state over the conditions at the border, McCain told The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza in an article published Thursday.


“It’s very bad,” the Republican senator said. “This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me,” McCain said. “Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.”

Trump’s latest polling numbers would seem to suggest that his message is resonating with Republican voters.

McCain, a longtime supporter of comprehensive immigration reform as a member of the Senate’s Gang of Eight, noted his battles with the far right, “very extreme element” of his state’s party over the years on the issue.

McCain made reference to Trump’s past support of Democratic candidates over the years, too.

“Some of this stuff is going to come out: He gave more money to Democrats than Republicans, he had Hillary Clinton at his wedding,” McCain said, referencing Trump’s 2005 wedding to his current wife Melania at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.

“Now he galvanized them,” McCain said, according to the article. “He’s really got them activated.”

The senator also made sure to mention that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another Gang of Eight member running for president, “backed away” from the immigration approach that the group took in 2013.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” McCain remarked, referencing Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

McCain, a longtime friend of Senate colleague and Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham, praised the South Carolina senator for being one of the few in the party to blast the multibillionaire’s remarks.

In a Sunday interview on CNN, Graham called Trump “a wrecking ball” for the GOP’s future, adding that Republicans “need to reject this demagoguery” or face the consequences.

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