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.

Erika Kirk and Charlie’s Parents Set to Attend Pivotal Tyler Robinson Hearing

WATCH: Bill Maher says Vance interview critics wouldn’t be happy unless he ‘punched him in the nose’

Trump Notches Another Victory as ‘Unprecedented Election Endorsement Run’ Shows No Signs of Ending

Alito blasts latest SCOTUS ballot ruling as invitation to ‘voter fraud’ risks

Weekend alligator attacks leave Florida woman dead, child injured

Two corrections officers held hostage after inmates take over portions of North Carolina detention center

Ethics panel clears Gallego as Luna declares, ‘Once a creep, always a creep’

Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts Side with Liberal Justices on Key Election Integrity Case

Conservatives revolt after Trump-appointed Barrett joins liberals in ‘shockingly wrong’ mail ballot ruling

Netanyahu’s lawyers compare his treatment by court to Adolf Eichmann as yearslong trial could go to 2028

Judge delays trial for White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting suspect

Wife of Louis Farrakhan dead at 90

Who is Lisa Cook? The central bank governor at the heart of the Supreme Court’s Trump-Fed showdown

American Airlines flight aborts Miami takeoff after business jet enters runway

Luigi Mangione returns to court for jury selection hearing after reported plea deal falls apart

“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.