The Time Trump Was So Petty He Made the Navy Hide the USS John S. McCain

Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and four years in office contained so much daily weirdness, wackiness, and horror that the human brain couldn’t comprehend it all. As Trump gets close to the White House again, “That Happened” brings you the surreal moments you may have forgotten — or blocked from your memory.

In February, Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake unsuccessfully attempted to make amends with Meghan McCain after having declared during her failed 2022 gubernatorial bid that former senator John McCain’s faction of the Republican Party needed to “get the hell out.” (Meghan’s rather definitive response to Lake’s entreaty regarding her late father: “NO PEACE, BITCH.”)

Lake is an election-denying acolyte of Donald Trump’s, and her contempt for McCain and his Republican Party is illustrative of the sharp break the Trump wing of the party represents with the GOP’s traditionally conservative past. It’s also a reminder of the remarkably strained relationship between Trump and McCain, temperamental opposites whose disdain for each other was both ideological and very personal.

Perhaps the strangest episode in their long-running feud came well after McCain’s death. The senator had been deceased for nine months when Trump visited Japan in May 2019, but Trump’s pettiness extended well beyond the corporeal world. As The Wall Street Journal reported at the time, the White House caught wind that the president might have to gaze upon his enemy’s name emblazoned on a ship. And it quickly put the kibosh on that dreadful possibility:

In a May 15 email to U.S. Navy and Air Force officials, a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command official outlined plans for the president’s arrival that he said had resulted from conversations between the White House Military Office and the Seventh Fleet of the U.S. Navy. In addition to instructions for the proper landing areas for helicopters and preparation for the USS Wasp — where the president was scheduled to speak — the official issued a third directive: “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.”

“Please confirm #3 will be satisfied,” the official wrote.

The USS John S. McCain, a destroyer, had been named after the late senator’s father and grandfather, both Navy admirals. In 2018, shortly before the younger McCain’s death, the Navy added his name to the ship in a rededication ceremony. Nonetheless, Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan “approved measures to ensure it didn’t interfere with the president’s visit,” as the Journal put it. Moving it altogether would have been difficult since the ship had been involved in a deadly collision two years earlier and was undergoing repairs. The solution was something even more glaringly ridiculous:

A tarp was hung over the ship’s name ahead of the president’s trip, according to photos reviewed by the Journal, and sailors were directed to remove any coverings from the ship that bore its name.

After the tarp was taken down, a barge was moved closer to the ship, obscuring its name. Sailors on the ship, who typically wear caps bearing its name, were given the day off during Mr. Trump’s visit, people familiar with the matter said.

As you can see, it was a real “mission accomplished” moment:

NEW: The White House wanted the USS John McCain “out of sight” for Trump’s visit to Japan. A tarp was hung over the ship’s name ahead of the trip, and sailors—who wear caps bearing the ship’s name—were given the day off for Trump’s visit. w/@gluboldhttps://t.co/6ugPceCOre pic.twitter.com/KuIoWJK5Kt

— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) May 29, 2019

Trump denied having any knowledge of this arrangement, which is hard to believe.

I was not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain during my recent visit to Japan. Nevertheless, @FLOTUS and I loved being with our great Military Men and Women - what a spectacular job they do!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2019

But even if he didn’t directly order the proverbial code red, the fact that anyone thought to hide the USS McCain from Trump’s sight is a marker of his fragile ego and a measure of his undying scorn for a man who was in many ways his opposite: a tradition-bound, socially conservative foreign-policy interventionist who was into decorum.

McCain summed up his differences with Trump in a 2017 60 Minutes interview. “He is in the business of making money, and he has been successful both in television as well as Miss America and others,” he said. “I was raised in the concept and belief that duty, honor, country is the lodestar for behavior that we have to exhibit every single day.”

Trump and McCain’s mutual dislike for each other stretched over many years.

One of the first big “Can he really get away with this?” moments of Trump’s first presidential campaign came in July 2015 when, in a repeat of comments he’d made 15 years earlier, he cast doubt on McCain’s status as a war hero, remarking that he “liked people who weren’t captured.” (Smart observers thought this boorish comment would likely spell the end of Trump’s campaign, an idea that seems utterly quaint now.) The two had already tangled before that with Trump whipping up crowds to boo at McCain’s name over his supposedly weak immigration stance and McCain lamenting that Trump had “fired up the crazies,” among other dustups. There were fleeting moments of harmony between the two, but McCain withdrew his support for Trump when the Access Hollywood tape blew up.

Then in 2017, shortly after the McCain family announced his cancer diagnosis, he strode onto the Senate floor and merrily tanked Republicans’ efforts to repeal Obamacare, delivering perhaps the most famous thumbs-down since Gladiator. That gesture reaffirmed his “maverick” reputation (which he hadn’t always been deserving of) and in the process incensed Trump, who never suffered a slight he didn’t forget.

The Japan incident was far from the first time that Trump had disrespected McCain posthumously. After McCain died of brain cancer in 2018, Trump had to be pressured into granting him full honors, thus keeping the White House flag at half-staff as the late senator was interred; it had been hastily raised back to full staff even as other flags around D.C. remained lowered. “Our hearts and prayers are going to the family of Senator John McCain … and we very much appreciate everything Senator McCain has done for our country,” the president grudgingly told reporters, perhaps gritting his teeth as he uttered the words. Trump was, unsurprisingly, not invited to McCain’s funeral.

Months after McCain’s death, Trump continued ragging on him via Twitter, adding a new line of attack. Trump accused the late senator of “spreading the fake and totally discredited” Steele dossier; it had emerged that McCain obtained the document and turned it over to the FBI before the 2016 election. (McCain speechwriter and “alter ego” Mark Salter’s memorable reply to Trump: “Here is what will never change. John McCain will always be a better man than you in every way we measure a man’s character. You’ll never beat him. Now fuck off, you miserable excuse for a human being.”)

“I have to be honest: I’ve never liked him,” Trump said of McCain in a 2019 speech, as if this had been some kind of secret.

Trump even expressed indignation that the McCain family hadn’t been more grateful postmortem: “I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which, as president, I had to approve. I don’t care about this, but I didn’t get a thank-you. That is okay. We sent him on the way, but I wasn’t a fan of John McCain.”

Today, McCain’s family and former advisers are still publicly bickering with the Trumpier elements of the GOP, so it’s clear the feeling remains mutual.