Sometimes a nickname just
sticks.
The maverick maverick maverick
maverick everyone knows is a maverick.
Here comes the maverick.
Despite being a lifelong conservative
Arizona Senator John McCain was
never afraid to go against the grain.
But he said he never considered
himself a maverick.
This is not a not a label he
really embraced all the time
not being a maverick.
But I liked standing up for what
I believe.
This is how a war hero
and a career politician learned to
march to the beat of his own drum.
Much to the chagrin of his own party
John McCain had a reputation
as a bit of a bad boy
and he wasn't always the best student when
he was in the U.S.
Naval Academy in Annapolis
LOreal SEO covered McCain mostly
in the 80s.
McCain crashed a few planes
and he graduated fifth from the bottom
of his class.
1967 was a very tough
year for McCain.
Within one month of active duty in the Navy
he suffered injuries from a massive fire
onboard the USS Forrestal in the
Gulf of Tonkin.
134 sailors died
in the tragedy
and John only 30 at the time
narrowly averted Death himself.
Only three months later McCain was
shot down over North Vietnam
and taken prisoner in Hanoi where
he was held in solitary tortured
and beaten repeatedly for years.
McCain's time as a prisoner of war left
him permanently disabled unable
to lift his arms above his head.
McCain returned to the U.S. a war
hero
and he decided to get involved in politics.
He ran for the U.S.
House in 1982
and won.
In 1986 he ran for the U.S.
Senate and won that seat as well.
But McCain's first term became embroiled
in what came to be known as the Keating Five
scandal where he
and four the lawmakers were accused of improperly
intervening in a probe by federal regulators
to help. Charles Keating CEO
of Lincoln Savings
and Loan Association.
After a slap on the wrist
and a slightly tarnished reputation
McCain bounced back by reaching across
the aisle on campaign finance reform
with Democrat Russ Feingold.
He successfully sponsored a major
overhaul of the campaign finance system.
Despite the objections of Republican
leaders
after serving over 10 years in Congress
McCain decided to run for the top job
himself.
During the 2000 Republican presidential
primaries McCain took some
unorthodox stances saying
some things that Republicans are really never
supposed to say such as.
I'm deeply concerned about a kind
of class warfare that's going on right now.
It's unfortunate.
There's a growing gap between the haves
and have nots in America
and I'm not sure we need to give
two thirds of that tax
cut of that money to the
wealthiest 10 percent of America
McCain's defeat in the primaries didn't stop
him from resisting Bush's platform.
During his presidency
Senator McCain infuriated
many fellow Republicans by opposing
President George W.
Bush's tax cuts
and also by cosponsoring
legislation that would provide
a path to citizenship for undocumented
immigrants.
He was also alone in his party
to speak out against so-called enhanced
interrogation techniques after 9/11.
McCain's captors in Vietnam coerced
a false confession from him so he
believed perhaps more strongly than anyone
that torture did not work.
By 2008 his reputation
of a maverick became a full fledged brand
something he embraced wholeheartedly for
his second presidential bid.
I'm a maverick.
I've been called a maverick.
He's the original maverick.
I think I'm going to have to cast
my vote for the maverick.
Now we're called a team of mavericks.
But it quickly became clear that Sarah Palin
was a different kind of maverick
the one that probably didn't help
his campaign.
One of his biggest regrets he says
in his new book was choosing Sarah
Palin as his running mate over
one of his best friends in the Senate Joe
Lieberman.
But there was another way McCain's maverick
ways defied his own interests during
his failed bid for the White House.
We're scared of an Obama presidency.
He resisted demagoguery
and insisted that his supporters
respect Barack Obama.
I have to tell you he is
a decent person
and a person that you do
not have to be scared
as a United States now.
Change has come to America.
Unfortunately John McCain
couldn't make it recently
claimed that he had never identified himself
as a maverick.
And we all know what happens in Arizona
when you don't have ID.
McCain was a tough critic of Obama's administration.
But along the way he insisted on open
debate and decorum
and he reached across the aisle on issues
like immigration reform
then Trump happened.
That is some group of people thousands.
Suffice it to say their intra party
relations left something to be desired.
Despite this McCain did insist
on supporting Trump as the Republican nominee.
The best thing to do is put it
behind us
and move forward until
THIS at which point
McCain withdrew his support
for Donald Trump's presidency.
McCain's resistance to Trump continued
right into the presidency.
Senator McCain has stood out
by his willingness to oppose
President Trump.
Other Republicans have been much more
willing to march in lockstep
with President
Then one fateful summer night on the
Senate floor.
After just being diagnosed
with brain cancer Sen.
John McCain made an appearance
to cast the deciding vote against
the Republican effort to repeal
Obamacare.
But it was a stunning vote in a very
dramatic night in the Senate chamber.
Except for one senator
who came into a room at three o'clock
in the morning and went like that we
would have had health care too.
While he continues to fight his brain cancer
McCain has been preparing for his eventual
passing
but jabs from the White House have
not relented.
A top White House communications aide
mocks Senator John McCain's brain
cancer diagnosis.
The White House still refusing to apologize
for that crass comment about Sen.
John McCain ill
will between Trump
and McCain has gotten to such a pitch that
McCain has let it be
known through a news report that he would
rather Trump not attend his funeral.
Let that sink in for a second.
A lifelong Senator uninviting
the sitting president of the United States
of the same party to his own
funeral.
Now if that is not a maverick
nothing is.