Donald Trump Slammed For Posting Picture Of Himself In Sympathy Message To John McCain’s Family On Instagram
John McCain once slammed Donald Trump as being an inauthentic, “reality show facsimile” of a politician who cared more about himself than anything else.
Trump’s final Instagram message offering sympathies on the Arizona Senator’s death likely wouldn’t have done much to change that view.
On Saturday, Trump took to the social media platform to share sympathies after McCain died following a battle with brain cancer. While the short statement itself — saying he was sending sympathies and respect to McCain’s family — wasn’t particularly controversial, the photo Trump chose to accompany the message was.
In the message, Trump added a picture of himself wearing a dark trench coat and looking pensively off into the distance. There was no picture of McCain.
Trump’s followers were not happy.
“He is much more of a man than you’ll ever be,” one wrote.
The post also didn’t go over well with Trump’s critics, especially after the extended spat between the two and the continual digs the White House took at McCain, even as he was dying from cancer.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump famously said that he didn’t believe McCain should be viewed as war hero because he was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese. Trump continued to take shots at McCain, especially after the Arizona Senator cast the deciding vote to end Trump’s bid to repeal Obamacare.
Earlier this year, White House staffer Kelly Sadler reportedly remarked during a meeting that McCain’s view on the new CIA chief didn’t matter because he would be “dead soon anyway.” As NPR noted, the White House refused to apologize in the aftermath of the controversial remark.
John McCain wasn’t too fond of Trump, either. In a 2018 book The Restless Wave, McCain said that Trump didn’t appear to have any real convictions other than projecting a tough demeanor.
“I’m not sure what to make of President Trump’s convictions,” McCain wrote, via Business Insider. “The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values.”
“It is hard to know what to expect from President Trump, what’s a pose, what’s genuine,” McCain added.
Trump’s Instagram account just reposted his tweet about Mccain with a photo… of Trump. pic.twitter.com/BOWI1gGQHu
— j.d. durkin (@jd_durkin) August 26, 2018
Donald Trump’s Instagram post offering sympathies on the death of John McCain is actually in line with the other content posted on the social media site. Roughly half of the posts are in the same style, showing a close-up shot of Trump overlayed with a quote from the president — or by someone else praising him.
