Ruben Gallego says Kari Lake lied when she claimed her attacks on John McCain were jokes

U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego stood by his policy-based critiques of the late Sen. John McCain and accused his Republican rival Kari Lake of telling lies to revise her history with McCain.

In a seven-minute interview Thursday on KTAR (92.3 FM) that effectively bookended days of fallout beginning with Lake’s interview on the Phoenix radio station earlier this week, Gallego, a Democratic member of Congress, said most of his former Marine colleagues were Republicans, but he learned to “agree to disagree, but you could still be friends.”

It was a simple answer to a problem that has hobbled Lake since her divisive 2022 gubernatorial run often pitted Lake against fellow Republicans, such as McCain allies and supporters.

The old issue took on new life this week when Lake claimed in a KTAR interview that her criticism of the six-term senator and 2008 presidential nominee were said in jest.

That led to Meghan McCain, John McCain’s daughter, to hit back at Lake on social media and an interview of her own.

Gallego, who is running for the seat held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., took to the airwaves to address the controversies.

“The fact that (Lake’s) trying to lie now I think is even more insulting,” Gallego said. “And again, where does this lead for Arizonans? Arizonans need solutions, not these type of political games that she’s playing.”

He said he had “entirely a lot of respect” for John McCain, a former Navy pilot who employed a joke on Gallego he used on many Marines.

“John McCain actually used to make fun of me a lot when I first got into Congress. He loved poking Marines. He used to say that he was going to say things slowly to me since we had problems understanding and reading. Look, that’s the kind of guy he was. He’s a funny guy,” Gallego said.

“I disagreed with him on a lot of policy, to be honest. But overall, there was deep respect there.”

Gallego posted tweets dating to 2010 critical of McCain on the Iraq War.

“It’s amazing to think how irrelevant McCain is. Only DC press is keeping the illusion going,” Gallego tweeted in 2010.

The next day, Gallego, a veteran who served in the Iraq War, had another tweet hitting McCain and then-Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz: “Now you care about the safety (of) troops? Where were you when you sent me to Iraq without armor?”

In 2012, before Gallego ran for Congress, he tweeted that McCain “demands investigation into Benghazi. Skips 2 hour Intel briefing on Benghazi. #fail”

On the fifth anniversary of McCain’s 2018 death, Gallego tweeted more respectfully about the former Navy aviator and statesman.

“Senator John McCain was an American hero,” Gallego wrote in language that borrowed from a 2018 tweet on the day McCain died. “We are a better, stronger country because of him. Fair winds and following seas, sailor.”

On Thursday, Gallego said his critiques of John McCain reflect the kind of political differences he has often encountered and moved past.

“It’s OK to disagree,” he said. “Being an enlisted Marine, … the majority of my Marine buddies are, you know, Trump supporters. They’re Republicans or conservatives.

“If I was going to take everything personal in politics or if they would, we would never see each other. We would never have our families meeting up. We would never have a reunion. So, I just think that we have to recognize that sometimes we are just going to have to agree to disagree, but you could still be friends. It’s OK for Democrats to have Republican friends and Republicans to have Democratic friends, and overall just be good Arizonans.”

Among her numerous attacks on John McCain, Lake asked a crowd in 2022, “We don’t have any McCain Republicans in here, do we? Get the hell out!”

She said the GOP “was the party of McCain. It was bad. Arizona has delivered some losers, haven’t they?”

In another broadside after winning the GOP nomination in 2022, Lake said, “We drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.”

On Monday, Lake said she jokingly derided McCain a year before the 2022 election.

She said that at the time she was taking “nuclear bomb-style incoming, tens of millions of dollars in attack ads from a McCain Republican.

“It was said in jest. And I think that if John McCain, who had a great sense of humor, would have heard it, he would have laughed.”

Lake said all Republicans “need to get a little bit thicker skin because we’re going through some tough stuff right now and we need to be able to take a joke.”

“This is very deeply personal,” she said. “I am 39 years old, and I just don’t want to live in this world where Trump and his minions like Kari Lake think that it is funny or not deeply hurtful and impactful to many people when you continue to desecrate my dad in death. … It never stops being painful.”

Meghan McCain said Lake did not comment about her father in jest, as Lake asserted Monday.

“It’s not a joke. I used to work on 'Saturday Night Live.' I know what a joke is,” she said. As for Lake’s invitation to get a beer or coffee, Meghan McCain ruled that out.

“We’re not friends and we have nothing in common,” she said. McCain indicated her election preference, saying, “Sinema 2024.”

Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is also vying for the GOP nomination, has not addressed the Lake-McCain controversy.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake saying McCain attacks were jokes is 'insulting,' rival says