On CNN's The Arena Saturday, Host Kasie Hunt presented a segment which seemed designed to mourn the loss of bipartisanship in Congress, warmly recalling nine years ago, the late Senator John McCain cast a last minute, decisive vote against a repeal of Obamacare, a legislative middle finger in Trump's face. What Hunt found was news: former Trump aide Marc Short said McCain lied to President Trump just prior to the vote, that he would vote for repeal.
Following a clip of CNN's Dana Bash, from the night of the vote, building up McCain, Hunt went to work.
BASH CLIP, 2017: He came in here, he asked his doctors, despite the fact that he has aggressive brain cancer, he asked his doctors to let him come back in the arena, this week at this very important, momentous occasion.
HUNT: It was nine years ago this week that Senator John McCain showed us all why he was known as the Maverick....That was the moment when the Arizona Republican gave his famous thumbs down on the Senate floor in a very public rebuke of his own party's attempt to roll back the Affordable Care Act.
Hunt then provided play-by-play of sorts, of the McCain vote.
HUNT: It was 1:29 in the morning. Senator McCain....enters the chamber. You see him there.... McCain waves his hand to get the clerk's attention and then gives that dramatic thumbs down. Wait for it. There it is. There was audible reaction on the floor. Gasps, applause. Cheers. Some groans.
Next up, McCain, speaking after the vote:
McCAIN: We've been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. That's an approach that's been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down without any support from the other side. With all the parliamentary maneuvers that requires. We are getting nothing done
Hunt seemed moved by that moment of betrayal:
HUNT: Wow. Blast from the past in so many ways. There have been these series of moments and most recently, Lindsey Graham's passing in some ways was one of the markers of an end of an era that McCain was talking about.
The message seemed to be that we are in the horrible Trump era now. That's weird, considering that in 2010, the "Affordable Care Act" passed without a single Republican vote, including McCain. Obama "mandated legislation top down without any support from the other side."
Hunt then turned to Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times, where the history-mangling thesis was underlined:
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What we've seen ever since then has been exactly what he talked about and feared, which is top down legislation not working across the aisle, everyone just passing things in the way that they can..... I think by and large we live in an incredibly partisan and acrimonious time.
The Obama years were incredibly partisan and acrimonious, but back then, they painted Obama as above it all. (He wasn't.)
Hunt then brought in Marc Short, former Chief of Staff for Vice President Mike Pence, who at the time of the vote was serving as Director of Legislative Affairs at the White House, into the conversation, and he confirmed something that President Trump has long claimed, and has long been denied by the liberal media.
HUNT: Take us kind of behind the scenes and to what it felt like in that moment and what it meant.
SHORT: I was in the Vice President's ceremonial office right off the Senate floor when John McCain was present for a phone call with President Trump, in which he told the President he'd be voting with him. And so that was really about an hour and a half before the vote. So we all at that point thought that we had this vote and we thought it was done. And about an hour and a half later, he went on the senate floor and gave his thumbs down.
HUNT: Did he ever explain why he changed his mind?
SHORT: He did not... Senator McCain and the President didn't really have a particularly close relationship. So I'm not sure he felt he owed him an explanation for the change.
Short went on to say that Lindsay Graham had even believed that McCain was a yes vote. But these revelations yielded only, "Hmm, wow, remarkable" from Hunt.
It's a bit shocking that Hunt seemed unaware that Trump has long claimed that McCain had lied to him about the vote in that phone call, and that McCain's staff and the media denied it. In fact in 2019, an article by CNN's Jim Acosta recounted the entire story. Short's eyewitness account, backing Trump's claim could be big news, but it won't be. This is CNN!
