Cindy McCain: Trump’s GOP ‘Not the Party My Husband and I Belonged To’

The widow of former Sen. John McCain, Cindy McCain, says President Trump’s nationalist-populist Republican Party is “not the party” she and her husband “belonged to.”

During an interview with Politico‘s Women Rule podcast, McCain said the party of Trump — centered around a pro-U.S. worker agenda — is not what she and her late husband were a part of.

“We have, on my side of the aisle, on the Republican side, we see a local party in Arizona that’s not functioning well,” McCain said. “And it’s excluding people. And it’s excluding people for the wrong reasons.”

“If you’re not walking the line, then you’re out,” she continued. “That’s just not right. That’s not the party that my husband and I belonged to.”

McCain also seemed to take subtle jabs at Trump’s way of communicating with his supporters, bypassing the establishment media and pundit class.

We Didn’t Get This Angry Because Americans Changed: We Got This Angry Because Washington Did

Fox News Legal Analyst Jonathan Turley Thoroughly Dismantles Lindsay Clancy’s Attorney After Debate Challenge

The Constitution Was Made for a Moral People: It’s Time to Teach Our Kids That Lesson

Obama Operative Turned Trump Voter Exposes the Anti-Working-Class Bigotry That Destroyed the Democrats

Fox News Stars Mourn the Brutal Murder of a Beloved ‘Fan Who Became a Friend’

Illegal Alien Released by Biden Admin Arrested After Allegedly Executing California Woman in Public

El-Sayed ignites firestorm after sharing 9/11 message on social media: ‘Piece of s—‘

Fox News True Crime Newsletter: Lindsay Clancy jurors, Bryan Kohberger’s legal move, Menendez brothers hearing

Firefighter caught on camera ripping pro-Palestinian agitator in Elmo costume near Ground Zero on 9/11

EXCLUSIVE: Pence group knocks Vance plan to pay stay-at-home parents up to $9K per child

Clinton, Bush received multiple warnings on bin Laden hijack plots before 9/11, declassified files show

First use of Alien Terrorist Removal Court sends Afghan woman back after Election Day ISIS plot: DOJ

Nashville Airport Authority Votes Unanimously to Change Name to Honor Dolly Parton

‘Open sore’: Families face agonizing wait as 9/11 mastermind’s trial pushed nearly 27 years after attacks

Watch: Convention Crowd Symbolically Anoints JD Vance for 2028 with Chant

“I think we’ve seen the end of men like my husband. At least for right now,” McCain said.

“The inability to even discuss issues — differing issues — it’s degenerated into name-calling and Twitter responses, and all of these things that not only do they not help the argument, but they don’t help foster good relationships with people,” McCain said.

While McCain’s husband lost the 2008 presidential election running on the decades-long Republican establishment platform of neoconservative foreign interventionism, extending the Bush-era tax cuts, and amnesty for illegal aliens, Trump swept to victory in 2016 with his “America First” agenda of a travel ban from terrorist-sponsored countries, a promise to bring U.S. troops home, and a commitment to pulling out of multilateral free trade deals and global agreements like TPP and the Paris Climate Accord.

Trump’s economic nationalist platform won him majorities in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — states not won by Republicans in years.

In a March 2019 poll by Harvard/Harris, about three-in-four U.S. voters said they support a nationalist-populist approach to trade, immigration, and foreign policy — that is, tariffs on foreign imports to protect American industries, less immigration, and less foreign intervention overseas.

Last year, former presidential candidate and columnist Pat Buchanan said McCain’s preferred part of former President George W. Bush’s party had “become a Trump party” on all the defining issues of the time.