An emotional Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hugged son-in-law Ben Domenech and told him to “take care” of his daughter Meghan, The Arizona Republic reported.
“John hugged me tonight,” conservative writer Domenech said Saturday night in a tweet that he later deleted, according to the newspaper. “He asked me to take care of Meghan. I said I would.”
Domenech, founder and publisher of The Federalist, also lashed out in the tweet, apparently at critics of the senator, who was diagnosed with brain cancer last July. “F―k you soulless crazies,” Domenech wrote. “F―k you all the way to hell.”
The six-term senator was released earlier this month from the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix following surgery for an intestinal infection.
He is currently at his home near Sedona, his wife, Cindy, said in a tweet last Monday.
Meghan McCain, co-host of ABC’s “The View,” said in a tweet earlier this month that she was traveling home to see her parents. She said on “The View” that she planned to fly back and forth from New York for a time. “So just know if I’m not here, I’m hanging out with my dad and my mom,” she said.
She thanked people for their “kind words and prayers” for her dad, adding: “It really means so much for my family.”
She recently posted a photo on Instagram, apparently from her wedding, with her dad. “Thank you for teaching me how to be a Viking warrior — even when some thought it more appropriate for boys,” she wrote.
The maverick senator, who ran on the GOP ticket for president against Barack Obama in 2008, has been one of the few Republicans to speak out against Donald Trump. During his campaign, Trump took shots at McCain for being captured in North Vietnam and held as a prisoner of war for five years. “He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump received four student deferments from military service between 1964 and 1968.
Last October, McCain slammed Trump policies and his supporters over the Mexican border wall and “crackpot conspiracy theories.” It’s “time to wake up,” McCain said in a speech at the Naval Academy. “I believe in America. We’re capable of better. We’re hopeful, compassionate people.”
He has said that attacking freedom of the press is “how dictators get started,” and lashed Trump in March for congratulating Vladimir Putin for winning a “sham election.”
Last month, McCain said Trump’s very public announcement that he was pulling U.S. troops out of Syria “emboldened” president Bashar Assad just days before Assad was accused of launching a chemical attack on his people.
McCain voted against his party’s bill to repeal and replace Obamacare last summer.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story indicated John McCain had been released from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, instead of in Phoenix.