David Jackson

USA TODAY

The 2008 presidential election was unique, but one of the candidates that year — John McCain — says it was nothing like 2016.

"I've never seen anything like this," McCain said Wednesday on NBC's Late Night With Seth Meyers.

The 2008 Republican nominee said Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders are tapping into anger and frustration with elected officials and the nation's political establishment in general.

Among the unusual events this cycle: Trump's disparagement of McCain's prisoner-of-war experience. But most things about Trump's candidacy are unusual, McCain said.

"Anybody that says he can shoot somebody and still get elected, that's beyond any framework of politics that I've ever seen," McCain told Meyers.

The Arizona senator said he would support whoever is nominated by the Republican Party, presumably including Trump and Cruz.

The 2008 GOP nominee also said he probably wouldn't fare very well as a presidential candidate in the current environment. That's probably one reason that McCain — who had been partial to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham before he dropped out of the race — isn't going to make an endorsement going forward in 2016.

"It's better for me to stay out of it," McCain said.