Rick Santorum Triggers CNN Panel by Suggesting They're Using McCain's Death for Political Points
On Monday night, former Pennsylvania senator and presidential contender Rick Santorum appeared on Chris Cuomo’s CNN show and blasted the media’s reaction to President Donald Trump’s response to the death of Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Things began to heat up on the show when Santorum told Cuomo, “I just don’t think it does anything to the memory of John McCain to use him as a cudgel to beat up the president. Let’s focus on the man and what he did and his life.”
He continued, “The media seems to have this fascination to try to use the death of John McCain to further belittle and beat up Donald Trump.”
Cuomo rushed to interrupt Santorum interjecting, “You think we need this to find reasons to criticize the president?”
“This is a moment that matters,” Cuomo said. “and you should think about how you behave in it as well.
Cuomo continued his rant saying, “John McCain made a point not to have him invited to his funeral.”
Santorum interrupted the host and asked, “So why don’t you beat up on John McCain for not inviting the president to his funeral?”
Bakari Sellers, first vice chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a former state lawmaker, jumped into the conversation to accuse Santorum and others within the GOP of “contorting themselves into a pretzel.”
“The fact is, you have John McCain who is a war hero,” Sellers said. “Even my Democrats, even the people on the left who want to chastise him for whatever his policy may have been, we’re saying that now is not the time.
“You have a president this week,” he continued, “who did not stand up and show the best of what we can be, and that’s a problem. John MCain deserves all the glory today. John McCain is a Republican who I can honestly say, that if my son wants to become a Republican when he grows up, ‘Be like John McCain.'”
Check out the segment here:
Santorum agreed with Sellers about McCain — to a point.
“John McCain was a great American. I didn’t always agree with him on all the issues, but he was a great American,” he said.
“But to suggest, somehow, that the president didn’t heap praise on John McCain and that made him a lesser person because he wasn’t as effusive in praise as others were, I just think is the reason” Americans are turned off by politics.
Santorum went on to talk about how the main message of McCain’s final letter was about “American exceptionalism.”
He then took a jab at Cuomo’s brother Andrew for saying America was never great.
Cuomo fired back saying, “Come on, don’t play cheap…. I’ll give you a hundred things about my brother that are true that are much worse than that.”
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