GOP Senator Now Blaming Obama’s ‘National Security Decisions’
Senator John McCain Thursday placed blame for the Orlando terror attack hate crime mass shooting in President Barack Obama‘s hands, only to backtrack on the attack hours later. The powerful Republican from Arizona, who is the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was beat by a wide margin by then-Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 election.
“Barack Obama is directly responsible for” the Orlando massacre, Sen. McCain said on the Senate floor, as the President and Vice President met with the families of the Orlando victims today. The former Navy Captain who was captured and tortured for nearly five years during the Vietnam War added that when Obama “pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaida went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures, utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq.”
That claim is widely disputed.
Hours later in a statement and on camera, Sen. McCain walked back his comments, saying he “misspoke,” as The Hill reports.
“I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible. I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself.”
Sen. McCain is facing what may be the toughest re-election campaign of his career, against Democratic U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.
McCain issued a statement on the Orlando terror attack that left 49 people dead, and another 53 injured, but, like most Republicans who acknowledged the tragedy, did not mention the victims were LGBT and were targeted because they were LGBT.
Some responses via Twitter:
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