Moments after voting to advance the Senate Republican bill to dismantle the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) urged his fellow lawmakers to return to a sense of bi-partisanship cooperation and ignore the “bombastic loudmouths” in the media.
“I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better to serve the people who elected us,” McCain said addressing the Senate floor. “Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and the television and the internet—to hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good.”
The Arizona Senator also knocked the legislative process for the Obamacare repeal legislation—criticism some saw as hypocritical considering his return to Washington Tuesday to support the motion to proceed despite a recent brain cancer diagnosis. While he voted to advance the bill, McCain said he would not support the legislation in its current form.
“I will not vote for this bill as it is today,” he said. “It’s a shell of a bill right now.”
McCain also appeared to indirectly criticize President Donald Trump, reminding his colleagues that they worked independent from the White House.
“We are not the president’s subordinates,” he said. “We are his equals.”
