McCain was no hero: Media’s deification is becoming Orwellian propaganda

McCain was no hero

Media’s deification is becoming Orwellian propaganda

By Jeffrey T. Kuhner

Sen. John McCain was not “America’s lion.” Since the death of the late Arizona Republican from brain cancer on Saturday, the mainstream media has been peddling an endless diet of propaganda and lies. McCain was not a “great” senator. He was not a great American. And he certainly was not a hero.

The fawning, sycophantic media coverage of McCain’s life and career is becoming a national disgrace. Don’t get me wrong: I feel sorry for him and his family. I lost my mother (and mother-in-law) to a long battle with cancer. His wife, children and grandchildren are grieving; and they deserve to have McCain’s memory respected and treated with dignity. Yet, our political and media elites are going way beyond that. They are politically deifying the man—and in the process doing severe damage to the truth. They are deliberately twisting and manipulating history to advance their globalist, anti-Trump agenda.

The real reason the establishment is in mourning is a simple one: McCain was one of them. He was a major creature of the Washington swamp. With his passing, RINO Republicans lost their leader and champion.

Moreover, McCain was the number one Never-Trump Republican. He loathed Trump. In October 2016, the Arizona maverick urged all Republicans to vote against Trump—even if it meant a Hillary Clinton presidency. He also played a key role in disseminating the now-discredited Steele dossier to the FBI in order to bring down President Trump. McCain was part of the Deep State’s plot to oust Trump and overturn a free and fair democratic election. There is a word for that: treason. Not content with trying to drive the president from power, McCain twice voted against repealing Obamacare. His goal: Stick it to Trump.

Even when diagnosed with brain cancer, McCain remained spiteful and vindictive to the end. He demanded the president not be invited to or speak at McCain’s funeral. (Sarah Palin, McCain’s loyal running mate has also been excluded from attending his funeral). Former President Obama—who not only defeated the establishment Republican in 2008, but did almost irreparable harm to America—will be speaking. Ex-Vice President Joe Biden will be a pall bearer. Former President George W. Bush, the man who beat McCain in 2000 for the GOP nomination and gave us the disastrous Iraq war, will be a speaker. In other words, he could mend fences with rivals from within the ruling class, but not Trump. Even from the grave, McCain could not restrain his hatred and loathing. In a farewell message, he launched a thinly veiled attack on Trump, blasting his call for a border wall and an America First foreign policy.

McCain despised Trump because he is the real maverick—the real outsider. Trump’s brand of economic patriotism and populist-nationalism is the antithesis of everything McCain stood for. McCain was never a Reaganite conservative; he just pretended to be one in order to keep getting elected. Rather, he was a free trade-open borders globalist, who championed mass amnesty for 12-30 million illegal aliens and unlimited Third World immigration. NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, free trade with communist China—McCain backed every transnational trade deal, regardless of the costs in the loss of millions of U.S. jobs, the destruction of our manufacturing base, and the erosion of our sovereignty. Instead of “country first,” he put the donor class first.

McCain was a warmonger and a dangerous military hawk. He never met a war he didn’t like. In fact, McCain was a modern-day imperialist, who fanatically defended the American empire—he called for a 100-year occupation of Iraq; he supported Bill Clinton’s bombing campaign against Serbia; he backed Obama’s illegal war in Libya; he sneaked into northern Syria, urged the radical Sunni Muslim rebels to rise up and overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and aided the CIA’s secret operation to send weapons to anti-Assad terrorists, including al Qaeda and ISIS; he openly embraced neo-Nazis in Ukraine, helping to foment a war against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass; and he wanted to invade Iran, as well as bomb North Korea and Russia. Had America listened to McCain, we would now be engulfed in World War III.

But, according to his supporters, McCain is a Vietnam War hero, a five-year survivor of the infamous Hanoi Hilton. He was repeatedly tortured and beaten after his plane was shot down. In fact, his record in Vietnam was shameful and scandalous. In July 1967, due to his reckless flying, McCain caused a major accident on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. The results were that 134 sailors were killed and 161 injured. American POWs have claimed that, during his capture, McCain gave away to his North Vietnamese torturers operational knowledge and key positions of U.S. forces. The notion that McCain was some kind of a Rambo, who heroically stood up to the Vietcong, is self-serving nonsense—a manufactured myth to cover-up his treasonous and criminal actions.

It’s remarkable that the same media outlets that demonized McCain as being a “racist” and “Islamophobic” a decade ago are now lionizing him as the second coming of Winston Churchill. Their goal is obvious: To turn McCain’s death and funeral into a giant, week-long anti-Trump rally. The ruling class so hates (and fears) Trump they are politicizing the passing away of an old, discredited and washed-up senator.

McCain was part of the decrepit, venal establishment that was overthrown in the 2016 Trump revolution. The media may mourn his passing. Middle America, however, has moved on. John McCain, R.I.P.

-Jeffrey T. Kuhner is host of “The Kuhner Report” on WRKO AM-680 in Boston. He can be reached at: jeffreykuhner@iheartmedia.com