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WaPo Columnist: McCain Colleagues Need to Push Back
As part of a eulogy for the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who passed away on Saturday after battling brain cancer, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post called on some of McCain’s colleagues to push back against Trump the way McCain did before his passing.
According to Max Boot, who has become a vociferous critic of Trump, “McCain was the rare celebrity who was even more impressive in person than on television. I remember on a flight to the Munich Security Conference wandering to the front of the Air Force executive jet to find McCain engrossed in a lengthy historical tome. Imagine that — a politician who spent his spare time reading history. Or anything at all.”
“A good deal of his political appeal lay in his ability to avoid sounding like a politician — perhaps the only thing he and President Trump have in common,” Boot continued. “Unlike Trump, however, McCain did not establish his authenticity with ignorant or deranged statements. McCain could be politically incorrect (I remember how hard he laughed watching ‘Borat’ on one flight) but he was never cruel or bigoted.”
The conservative pointed out that he worked with McCain as a policy adviser, saying the late senator — unlike the current president — had a clear-eyed view of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, once remarking, “I looked in Mr. Putin’s eyes and I saw three letters–a K, a G, and B.”
“McCain will be remembered, above all, for his character and courage. While other privileged young men were discovering ailments such as ‘bone spurs’ to avoid the Vietnam War, McCain requested a combat assignment and spent more than five hellish years in the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ POW camp,” Boot wrote in a direct shot at Trump.
He then challenged GOP lawmakers to step up and do the job McCain was doing from the Senate floor.
“McCain’s passing, tragic at any time, is all the sadder now,” he wrote. “His dedication to America’s global leadership, advocacy for human rights, steadfast opposition to despots, devotion to bipartisanship, willingness to break with his own party, insistence on putting the nation’s interest above self-interest, and, above all, his unwavering sense of right and wrong — all are desperately needed at a time when his party has embraced an amoral, narcissistic demagogue who fawns over tyrants and flirts with isolationism and protectionism and white nationalism.”
“Trump hated McCain and insulted him at every turn because McCain was everything Trump is not — and everything that we need in our politics today but tragically lack,” he concluded.
You can read the whole piece here.
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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An election expert told a federal judge that the witnesses the FBI relied on during its investigation that led to the seizure of ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, misunderstood elections.
Former U.S. Election Assistance Commission official Ryan Macias, “testified that the list of irregularities the FBI identified didn’t represent a crime and that the witnesses the government based their investigation on appeared misinformed,” NBC News reported.
The witnesses the FBI cited “use contradictory terminology and it represents a misunderstanding of how elections work,” Macias said.
Macias also told a judge that the evidence the Bureau used to justify the controversial seizure of the ballots “doesn’t make sense.”
READ MORE: ‘Wrong Answer’: Conservative CPAC Audience Cheers Impeachment
Fulton County officials submitted a sworn declaration from Macias, who had advised the county during the 2020 election, the Associated Press reported. He said the Justice Department’s affidavit contains “a multitude of false or misleading statements and omissions” and offered explanations for the alleged “deficiencies.”
Fulton County is suing to force the return of its election materials. Its attorney, Abbe Lowell “criticized the government’s witnesses and information, which were laid out in a since-unsealed sworn affidavit that is ‘full of inaccuracies,'” NBC reported.
Lowell also argued that the government’s witness list couldn’t be trusted because it included “someone who was sanctioned twice by the courts for lying about elections.”
The person Lowell referred to, NBC reported, was Kurt Olsen, “a Republican who tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Olsen was appointed by President Donald Trump to investigate the 2020 election from within his administration.”
Lowell also told the judge that there was no crime because there was no proof of intentional wrongdoing.
“The only element that turns normal election irregularities into crime is intent,” he said.
READ MORE: Rubio Vows to ‘Destroy’ Parts of Iran’s Military Trump Bragged Were Already Decimated
Image via Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to contradict the commander-in-chief on Friday, speaking on the administration’s war efforts in Iran.
“We’re going to destroy their navy, we are going to destroy their air force, and we are going to significantly destroy their missile launchers so they can never hide behind these things to get a nuclear weapon,” Secretary Rubio said, according to CNN. He also insisted the U.S. military is “ahead of schedule” on these goals.
But according to President Donald Trump, those goals were already completed.
“We’re having, by the way, a tremendous success, as you know, in Iran,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “We had one in Venezuela, and now we’re having one in Iran.”
“They have no Navy left. They have no Air Force left. They have no anti aircraft equipment left, no radar left, no leaders left. The leaders are all gone,” he said.
“Nobody knows who to talk to,” Trump continued, despite having also insisted that he is in productive negotiations with Iran. “But we’re actually talking to the right people and they want to make a deal so badly. You have no idea how badly they want to make a deal.”
Iran has publicly denied it is negotiating with the United States.
CNN also reported that Rubio said “that the US can achieve its objectives in the Iran war ‘without any ground troops,’ as more than 1000 extra service members have been ordered to deploy to the region.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: We’re having tremendous success in Iran. They have no navy, no air force, no anti-aircraft equipment, no radar, no leaders left.
You have no idea how badly they want to make a deal and we’ll see what happens. pic.twitter.com/VXD0fokxxw
— Department of State (@StateDept) March 24, 2026
READ MORE: ‘Wrong Answer’: Conservative CPAC Audience Cheers Impeachment
Image via Reuters
The chairman of the influential Conservative Political Action Conference was stunned on Friday when his audience delivered an unexpectedly awkward response.
“How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?” Matt Schlapp asked.
The audience cheered, applauded, and cried, “yeah!”
Schlapp quickly cut them off.
“No. That was the wrong answer,” he retorted, appearing somewhat embarrassed.
“How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?” Schlapp was forced to ask again.
“No,” he quickly directed.
Things did not appear to be going as planned.
“Can someone bring some coffee out?” Schlapp asked.
“We’ve got to keep this House majority!” he then declared, apparently cognizant that impeachment of the president could be possible were Republicans to lose control.
An attempt by @mschlapp to hype up the CPAC crowd goes horribly wrong —
“How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?”
[cheers]
“That was the wrong answer…” pic.twitter.com/PQUCThdgV3
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) March 27, 2026
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Image via Reuters
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