Cindy McCain cuts ad for Biden: ‘A president who will honor our fallen heroes’

Cindy McCain, wife of the late GOP Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), is featured in a new ad from Joe Biden’s campaign in which she says the Democratic candidate would be “a president who will honor our fallen heroes.”

In the 60-second video titled “Like John Did,” McCain describes Biden’s friendship with her late husband in the Senate, where they served together for years, saying it was “a friendship that you don’t see too often.”

“They’d fight like hell on the floor, and then they’d go eat lunch together,” McCain says as photos flash of Biden and her late husband. “They always put their friendship and their country first.”

McCain then takes several implicit jabs at President Trump, saying America needs a president who will “put service before self,” “lead with courage and compassion, not ego” and “honor our fallen heroes.”

The “fallen heroes” comment appears to be a reference to a report from The Atlantic last month that claimed Trump had privately belittled service members who died in World War I, calling them “losers” and “suckers.”

Fox News and other outlets subsequently confirmed some of the details of the story, while Trump and a number of White House officials said the president never made such comments.

McCain officially endorsed Biden for president in September, saying he’s the “only candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation.” She has also joined the advisory board of Biden’s presidential transition team.

Trump long had a contentious relationship with John McCain, with the former Republican senator regularly voicing criticism about his administration’s actions. McCain was the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee and served in the Senate for more than 30 years before his death from brain cancer in 2018.

During his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump caught backlash for saying that McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, was not a hero because he preferred those who weren’t “captured.” Trump also lambasted the senator for voting against a scaled-down GOP bill to repeal ObamaCare in 2017.

Biden has maintained leads in recent polls in Arizona, McCain’s home state. A New York Times-Siena College poll released this week found the Democratic candidate leading Trump by 8 percentage points. A CNBC-Change Research poll from last month showed Biden ahead of the president by 6 percentage points.