Donald Trump went out of his way during the campaign to antagonize and insult John McCain. The president-elect may soon come to regret that decision.

The fireworks over Russian interference in the presidential election made clear McCain will be the rare Republican politician willing to stand up to the soon-to-be Republican president. Having just secured his sixth and probably final term, the 80-year-old McCain has little to lose as he leads the charge for a wide-ranging investigation into Russian cyberattacks.


It’s not just their wildly divergent views on Russia that the two could clash over. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, McCain will wield enormous sway over Trump’s Pentagon, with the ability to derail Defense Department nominees and an outsize voice in shaping the department’s annual budget.

Trump, who declared a month into his presidential bid that McCain was “not a war hero” and that “I like people who weren’t captured,” reached out to McCain recently in an apparent attempt to move past the election. The Arizona Republican told Politico that Trump called him to discuss the nomination of retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis for defense secretary and “several other issues.”

It was a small gesture, coming before the flare-up over Russian meddling in the election, but one McCain said he appreciated.

“I’m always glad when a president-elect of the United States calls,” McCain said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

But despite that conversation — Trump had an ideal ice-breaker in Mattis, whom McCain has called “one of the finest military officers of his generation” — there’s evidence McCain is still smarting over the election of a man who ran for president embracing Russia and bashing core principles long espoused by McCain and other pro-interventionist defense hawks.

McCain was one of two Republicans — along with his chief Senate ally, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — to sign onto a bipartisan statement over the weekend with incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that “recent reports of Russian interference in our election should alarm every American.” Allegations that Russia sought to influence the election, the senators said, should be investigated in a “bipartisan manner.”

Later, on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” McCain called for a select committee to investigate the issue. That put him at odds with Trump, whose transition team bashed allegations that Russia sought to tilt the election in his favor, saying it came from “the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” McCain has tasked Graham with running an Armed Services oversight effort focused on cyberthreats — a probe that might look into the impact of Russian hacking on the presidential election.

View McCain on Tillerson: 'I am concerned' During an interview with CNN on Tuesday morning, Sen. John McCain said that he was 'concerned' about the selection of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, but 'also believe[s] the president deserves his nominees to get a fair hearing.'

McCain kept Trump at arm’s length during his Senate campaign and withdrew his support in October after a video surfaced of Trump in 2005 bragging about groping women.

Since then, the senator has been prickly when the topic of Trump comes up, in recent weeks berating any reporter who dares ask him about the incoming commander in chief.

“I have said and continue to say that I am not commenting on Mr. Trump’s comments — I have too much other work to do to do that,” an angry McCain said recently. “Let me make it perfectly clear, I am not commenting on Donald Trump’s daily comments. I’m not going to do it.”

The senator, though, won’t be able to avoid crossing paths with Trump next year. On some issues, such as boosting the defense budget, the two men are natural allies. On others, such as human rights and torture, they could be on a collision course.

“There’s a widespread assumption that because Republicans own the farm, everybody’s going to hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya,’” said Gordon Adams, who was a defense budget official in the Bill Clinton White House and is a professor emeritus at American University. “I expect Trump to have as much trouble with John McCain as any other president.”

Several Senate Democrats said they consider McCain a key voice in reining in a president-elect who vowed on the campaign trail to bring back waterboarding and kill the families of terrorists. McCain endured torture during his five-and-a-half years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam.

“He’s already been incredibly effective and outspoken with respect to torture, and no one has more legitimacy or respect when it comes to not just that issue but so many other issues,” said Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on McCain’s Armed Services panel. “He’ll be a voice that, on that issue particularly, will be very decisive.”

Last year, McCain fought to get an anti-torture provision in the annual National Defense Authorization Act. He has already issued a warning to Trump not to reinstate George W. Bush-era interrogation practices.

“I don’t give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do. We will not waterboard,” McCain said last month at an annual security conference in the Canadian city of Halifax, adding that anyone who sought to bring back torture would find themselves in court “in a New York minute.”

The senator is also expected to push back against any attempts by the Trump administration to appease Russia or back down from U.S. commitments to allies in Eastern Europe, the Middle East or Asia.

His top vehicle for pushing his vision on the new administration will be the NDAA, a must-pass defense policy bill crafted each year by the House and Senate Armed Services panels. The massive annual measure is typically loaded with requirements and restrictions intended to force the White House to adopt lawmakers’ views on key issues.

The NDAA is “the one piece [of legislation] you always know will move,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). The 2016 vice presidential nominee predicted that McCain’s role as Armed Services chairman “will only increase in importance” under Trump.

McCain has proved time and again his skill at using his gavel to derail White House initiatives. He blocked a series of Obama administration cost-cutting plans and strong-armed the Pentagon into putting in place his own proposals to reform weapons-buying practices.

For months last year, McCain blocked the confirmation of a number of nominees for top civilian posts at the Pentagon — first as payback over Democrats using the “nuclear option” to make it easier to confirm judicial nominations and then in retaliation for Obama’s threats to veto the NDAA.

McCain will almost certainly use at least some of these tactics under Trump. He has already signaled strong support for Trump’s nomination of Mattis, but there will be dozens of other nominees for top Pentagon posts, all of whom will need McCain’s blessing to be confirmed.

McCain has also signaled he might be a roadblock if Trump picks ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for secretary of state, saying in a Fox News interview that Tillerson’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “matter of concern.”

“McCain will continue to be McCain,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “He’s going to push his issues on the Senate Armed Services Committee, regardless of who’s in the White House.”

