Late Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) former chief of staff says the late senator believed former President Donald Trump was an “a**hole.”
Grant Woods, former chief of staff to McCain, told MeidasTouch, “He thought Trump was an a**hole and he thought he was an idiot.”
“If he spent any time on it, it was in trying not to say that publicly,” Woods, former Arizona attorney general, added.
Trump said in 2015 of McCain, a former prisoner of war, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” The feud between the two began many years ago.
Scoop: Former Arizona Attorney General and John McCain Chief of Staff @GrantWoods reveals never-before-heard details on what McCain thought of Trump pic.twitter.com/7p829hd5N0
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 6, 2021
Woods also appeared on “New Day” Friday where CNN’s Brianna Keilar opened the segment, “You said [McCain] called it as he saw it, and he thought Trump was an a**hole and he thought Trump was an idiot … But tell us about what he thought about him.”
“I know you guys love breaking news, I don’t know it’s breaking news — John McCain thought Trump was an a**hole. But he did,” Woods responded.
He continued, “The interesting thing to me was, like many, I would be outraged daily by Trump’s antics and the things that he did as a candidate, and then as president. McCain was interesting. John kind of took it all in stride. He really spent very little time thinking about Trump, talking about Trump, or worrying about Trump.”
"I don't know it's breaking news that John McCain thought Trump was an asshole – but he did, we all did, okay?" says McCain's former chief of staff. pic.twitter.com/QvxhBxJeoM
— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) July 9, 2021
Talking on the moment Trump suggested McCain was not a “hero,” Woods said it “did not bother [McCain] in the least. He was just, like, ‘OK, whatever.'”
He added that while McCain could brush it off, when the late senator began to think about other prisoners of war (POW), he was “bothered” by how it affected others.
McCain responded in 2015 to Trump’s remarks:
“The great honor of my life was to serve in the company of heroes,” McCain said. “I’m not a hero. … Those that inspired us to do things that we otherwise wouldn’t have been capable of doing. Those are people that I think he owes an apology to.”