Meghan McCain vowed to support neither former President Donald Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris during the recent election, instead making an unlikely choice.
She says she voted for her father, John McCain, who died in 2018.
Ms. McCain made the pronouncement Thursday on Katie Couric’s “Next Question” podcast.
“I wrote in my dad. Is that cliche?” she said. “I’m so sorry, I know, I know. It’s so … people are so mad at me, Katie ― mad that I didn’t vote either way. And I was like, I have such Christian guilt at night, and I don’t want anything on my conscience with any of it. And I just can never vote for Trump. I can’t do it. I could never explain it to my children.”
The president-elect and the McCain family have butted heads for some time following remarks in 2015 about Mr. McCain’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Mr. Trump took a swipe at the former Navy pilot, calling him “a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK?”
That feud extended into Mr. Trump’s first term, particularly when the lawmaker torpedoed Republicans’ effort to repeal Obamacare. When the senator died following a battle with brain cancer, the president wasn’t invited to the funeral.
Though Ms. Harris couldn’t earn her vote, Ms. McCain still praised her for jumping into “the cockpit of a crashing plane” after President Biden withdrew from the race in July.
“I don’t know how many other politicians could have done that,” Ms. McCain said. “And I actually think that there are a lot of genuine criticisms of her that I can give. But I don’t think she’s this cataclysmic disaster that she’s being portrayed as now. I think it’s actually pretty unfair.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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