John McCain says Trump's debt deal with Democrats wasn't bipartisanship

published 10 September 2017

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appeared on CNN's State of the Union Sunday to talk immigration policy, President Trump's debt deal with Democrats, and his own cancer diagnosis.

On immigration, McCain and host Jake Tapper discussed Trump's suspension of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, a move many on lawmakers on both sides of the aisle oppose. A DACA bill ought to be formally passed by Congress in a "bipartisan," "comprehensive fashion," McCain said, including a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, because it isn't "conscionable to tell young people who came here as children that they have to go back to a country that they don't know."

McCain was critical of Trump's debt agreement, arguing that it should not be seen as "an exercise in bipartisanship" because it had been previously rejected by Republican leadership in Congress. The senator made the case that the deal is "basically devastating to national defense," though the United States remains totally unchallenged as owner of the largest and most expensive military in the world.

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Turning to his brain cancer prognosis, McCain was mostly optimistic. "I'm facing a challenge, but I've faced other challenges," he said. "And I'm very confident about getting through this one as well." McCain is due to receive an update on his condition with new test results Monday. "Look, this is a very vicious form of cancer that I'm facing," he told Tapper, "but all the results so far are excellent." Watch an excerpt of the conversation below. Bonnie Kristian

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.