McCain Slams Trump for Firing Up GOP ‘Crazies’

Republicans are taking note of Donald Trump’s maniacal divisiveness and its effect on the solidarity of their party in an election that’s shaping up to be nothing short of a circus.

Sen. John McCain was eager to get a word in after Trump’s rally last weekend in McCain’s home state of Arizona, where the presidential hopeful was joined on a Phoenix stage by the father of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw, who was killed by an undocumented immigrant in Los Angeles.

“This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me,” McCain told The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza this week. “Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.”

These latest theatrics from the candidate created by and for the oligarch class are a follow-up to Trump’s July 6 statement in which he unabashedly claimed, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.” McCain, who supports comprehensive immigration reform, does not want voters to forget Trump’s tendency to ping-pong between parties—giving large sums to committees such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and chumming with the Clintons at his umpteenth wedding, to name a few instances.

McCain elaborated on his concerns in The New Yorker story:

“We have a very extreme element within our Republican Party,” McCain said. He then noted that he was personally censured by Arizona Republicans in January 2014 and has been fighting to push out the extremists in the state GOP ever since. “We did to some degree regain control of the party.”

McCain fears that Trump may be reversing those gains. “Now he galvanized them,” McCain said. “He’s really got them activated.”

But will McCain’s dissent wake anyone up, or will the crazies keep coming?

–Posted by Rory Thost