Vance insists John McCain wouldn’t have supported Harris if he saw the US-Mexico border

The late Republican senator for Arizona, John McCain, wouldn’t have supported Kamala Harris if he saw the state of the US-Mexico border, according to GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance during a Phoenix campaign stop this week.

“Look, one of the things I love about Donald Trump, and I never knew John McCain, but I suspect that one of the things that I would have loved about John McCain is that they didn’t let their personal grievances get in the way of serving the country,” Vance said on Thursday.

“OK, so John McCain, I’m sure, disagreed with Donald Trump on a whole host of issues. And, yes, Donald Trump disagreed with John McCain on a whole host of issues. I do not believe for a second that if John McCain were alive today, and he sees what’s going on at the American southern border, that he would support Kamala Harris and all the destruction she’s wrought.”

The Trump-Vance campaign has frequently sought to paint Kamala Harris, who as Vice President worked with Central American countries to address root causes of migration, as the “border czar” personally responsible for the record number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border last year.

Arizona, a battleground state with both a high proportion of anti-immigration conservatives and immigrants from Mexico, is a testing ground for the appeal of the Trump’s campaign’s border message.

According to those who knew John McCain, Vance’s sentiment missed the mark. “John McCain was working for a solution to the border, not just politicizing it,” Wes Gullet, McCain’s former state director, toldPolitico.

In fact, one of McCain’s last actions in the Senate was to introduce a bipartisan border bill in 2018 — an effort with similarities to the Biden administration’s