Donald Trump coloured in the American flag and appeared to give it a blue stripe
Posted on August 26, 2018 by Greg Evans in news
UPVOTE
If you need proof that Donald Trump's head might not be in the right place at the moment take a look at what happened when he visited a children's hospital in Ohio.
Although it's easy to accuse the president of a lot of misdemeanours and gaffs, we're pretty sure he knows what the American flag looks like.
Yet on Thursday, he, Melania Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar visited the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio for a photo opp.
During their trip, Trump sat down with some kids and took part in the simple act of colouring in the American flag.
The 'Ol' Stars and Stripes' and 'The Red, White and Blue,' is arguably the most famous flag on the planet but for whatever reason Trump started to colour one of the stripes in blue and not red.
This might have gone unnoticed if Azar hadn't tweeted out a picture of Trump's colouring in job in his message about the opioid crisis.
View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Alex Azar
✔
@SecAzar
The opioid crisis is one of our top priorities at HHS, with a drumbeat of action on the full range of efforts where we can assist local communities. Today, I joined @POTUS & @FLOTUS in Ohio to learn how states and communities are responding to the challenge of opioid addiction.
10:03 AM - Aug 25, 2018
Twitter immediately picked up on the error and they had theories as to what might have been going on.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Talia
@2020fight
The President has colored his flag wrong.
That is all.
11:22 AM - Aug 25, 2018
Talia
@2020fight
Replying to @2020fight
Proof it’s real ⤵️
11:54 AM - Aug 25, 2018
Amanda Fredette
@MandaFredette
Replying to @2020fight
If this was because a kid colored it wrong by mistake so,he decided to finish for the child than that's super adorable💙If it was his idea...UGH.
4:30 PM - Aug 26, 2018
Deangelo Vickers
@joshmartin513
Replying to @joshmartin513 @2020fight
HE LITERALLY HAS IT PINNED TO HIS SUITCOAT WTF
1:51 PM - Aug 26, 2018
News Junkie 💯 & extremely nosy 😎
@LeeAnneJarrett5
Replying to @2020fight
This little boy is thinking 🤔..{The President doesn’t know what he’s doing & I can’t correct him..Trump is making my brain hurt}. Poor kid.
1:40 PM - Aug 26, 2018
8
See News Junkie 💯 & extremely nosy 😎's other Tweets
Twitter Ads info and privacy
moebates 🌊
@moebates
Replying to @2020fight
You just can’t make this crap up. How can you claim to love our flag, but color it 🇷🇺? SMH
2:26 PM - Aug 26, 2018
Climate Watcher
@pmagn
Replying to @2020fight
Isn't that the Russian flag?
4:29 PM - Aug 26, 2018
It is possible that Trump may have been correcting a mistake made by the child or that he may have just been having a bit of fun.
However, we should point out that around a year ago Trump claiming that athletes who bent down on one knee during the national anthem were disrespecting the American flag.
We are not quite sure if colouring in the flag incorrectly directly translates as showing disrespect to the flag but either way, we can probably forgive him just this once as he definitely has bigger things on his plate right now.
HT Mashable
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Elon Musk Abandons Plan to Take Tesla Private Two Weeks After Bombshell Tweet - TIME
Elon Musk Abandons Plan to Take Tesla Private Two Weeks After Bombshell Tweet
Posted: 25 Aug 2018 06:26 AM PDT
(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk scrapped his plan to take Tesla Inc. private, a remarkable reversal more than two weeks after blindsiding employees and investors with the idea in a bombshell tweet.
In a blog post published late Friday, Tesla’s chairman, CEO and largest shareholder said he had met with the board and “let them know that I believe the better path is for Tesla to remain public. The Board indicated that they agree.”
The about-face ends speculation about how Musk would raise money to take Tesla private, but it’s unlikely to ward off scrutiny of the maverick CEO’s actions. Musk’s Aug. 7 tweet that he wanted to take the electric-car maker private at $420 a share and had “funding secured” sent the shares soaring before it became apparent he didn’t have financing lined up.
The episode led to a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a person familiar with the matter. Musk’s behavior, including a tearful interview with the New York Times that touched on his lack of sleep, has led to calls for Tesla to hire a chief operating officer to help reduce stress on the CEO. Musk, who also runs the rocket-launching company SpaceX and a tunnel-drilling outfit called the Boring Co., is busy trying to ramp up Tesla’s production of the Model 3 sedan and make the company profitable in the second half of the year.
In an Aug. 13 blog post, Musk indicated that he believed based on conversations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund that he had financial support to go private. In his blog post Friday, Musk reiterated his “belief that there is more than enough funding to take Tesla private” but said a transaction would be distracting and take too long.
“Given the feedback I’ve received, it’s apparent that most of Tesla’s existing shareholders believe we are better off as a public company,” wrote Musk. “Although the majority of shareholders I spoke to said they would remain with Tesla if we went private, the sentiment, in a nutshell, was ‘please don’t do this.’”
In a later tweet, he added: “In talking to our public investors, most were supportive of optimizing for long-term value creation over quarterly earnings. This was also a factor in remaining public.”
Musk declined to comment further Friday on how he arrived at his decision. He was active on Twitter late Friday, sharing updates about SpaceX and a Hyperloop pod competition.
In a separate statement, the board confirmed the decision and announced its intention to dissolve a committee of independent directors formed to review Musk’s proposal.
“We fully support Elon as he continues to lead the company moving forward,” the independent board members said.
Musk had hired both Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, the top two merger advisers in the U.S., to advise him personally in his bid to take the company off of the public market, according to people familiar with the arrangements. Both banks have been lead underwriters on most of the company’s stock and convertible debt offerings.
“Only Elon wanted to go private,” Ross Gerber, CEO of fund manager Gerber Kawasaki and an ardent Tesla supporter, said in a tweet. “No other shareholders wanted to. We’re all holding our shares either way.”
Investor Plea
ARK Investment Management, which holds about 0.2 percent of Tesla’s shares according to data compiled by Bloomberg, had implored Musk in an open letter this week to keep Tesla public. Going private would deprive investors of the chance to participate in its rising value, Chief Investment Officer Cathie Wood said.
“My guess is that the large institutional investors said to Elon ‘this all sounds a little half-baked’,” Stephen Diamond, an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University who specializes in corporate governance, said in a phone interview late Friday. “The board called his bluff. The clock was ticking on the class period of all of these shareholder lawsuits. Hiring Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley gave Musk cover, but they had to cut off the damage and end the charade.”
Donald Trump’s circus act is a sinister distraction - Financial Times
August 26, 2018.
Donald Trump’s circus act is a sinister distraction
The president vowed to drain the swamp but has handed the US to the highest bidders
EDWARD LUCE Add to myFT
© Matt Kenyon
The circus act children love the most is the one that is meant to distract them. When the clown comes out, the kids have eyes for nothing else. Little do they notice the scenery changes in the background. Elephants may be replaced by trapeze artists. Flame eaters supplant the lions. But the children stay riveted on the clown in the spotlight.
Donald Trump is the circus maestro of our age. Since the US president took office, he has upended America’s regulatory culture. Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, described it as the “deconstruction of the administrative state”. Most of us are too entertained to pay close attention. Much as the media love to hate Mr Trump, he is the gift that keeps on giving. Traffic is booming. Advertising dollars keep flowing in. Lollipops are on me!
Every now and then one notices blurry figures in the gloaming. One of them is Betsy DeVos, Mr Trump’s education secretary, and scourge of public education. Another is Mick Mulvaney, his budget director and acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We were briefly entertained by Scott Pruitt, the disgraced former head of the Environmental Protection Agency — chiefly because he installed a $43,000 soundproof telephone booth for his office that he used once. Then there is Ryan Zinke, the secretary of the interior, and Ajit Pai, chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
Together these figures are making a bonfire of federal regulations. Doubtless some of them deserve to be burnt. But those are unlikely to include the rule requiring for-profit colleges — the likes of Trump University — to show their graduates managed to land jobs that justified the steep debt they took on. Colleges that failed to comply would lose their share of $500m in annual subsidies, according to the old rule.
Person in the News
Michael Cohen, the president’s fixer who knew too much
The man in charge of the department of education’s fraud investigations is a former dean of a for-profit college that paid $100m to settle a false marketing lawsuit. Ms DeVos, who inherited millions and married into billions, has reopened the taxpayer spigot for such colleges.
It seems to run in the family. Her brother, Erik Prince, made his fortune as the founder of Blackwater, the mercenary outfit that was shut down after its employees killed civilians in Iraq. He is lobbying the White House to outsource US operations in Afghanistan to a 5,000 private army that would be headed by a corporate viceroy. Mr Trump is said to be open to the idea.
Then there is the EPA’s move to scrap Barack Obama’s clean power plan, which prompted electricity companies to use clean energy, such as wind, solar and gas, rather than coal. The idea was to meet America’s pledge to reduce carbon emissions under the Paris accord from which Mr Trump walked away. His EPA is incinerating other rules, such as one that holds chemical companies liable for arsenic they leave in the ground.
A few blocks away, in another building populated by unentertaining types, Mr Zinke’s interior department is shrinking protected areas of natural beauty. Great chunks of America’s national monuments are being opened to the drillers.
Mr Zinke has also lifted the ban on importing hunting trophies — the giraffe, lion and other big game that hunters had to leave behind in Africa. This is the same man who last week blamed the worst fires in California’s history on the actions of “environmental terrorist groups”.
Another rule worth keeping was one that protected consumers from payday lenders— the outfits that charge usurious rates to people who live on the margins. Mr Mulvaney wants to do away with that. The payday lenders association held this year’s annual conference at one of Mr Trump’s golf clubs in Florida. Described by one colleague as like a “mosquito in a nudist colony”, Mr Mulvaney is shrinking the best thing that arose from the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis. The CFPB is meant to protect vulnerable Americans from the kind of hoodwinking that led to the subprime mortgage crisis.
I could go on. But readers’ eyes may glaze over. Who wants to hear about the end of the net neutrality rule, or breaches of the presidential emoluments clause, when we could discuss how many cheeseburgers Mr Trump eats every day? Why dwell on tax breaks for property developers when we could be analysing Melania Trump’s subliminal messaging?
At some point the circus will move on. What will it leave in its wake? Mr Trump was elected on the vow of remembering the forgotten American. He also promised to drain the swamp. These were serious pledges that swayed many who might otherwise have been put off by Mr Trump’s character.
In practice, he has handed the country to the highest bidders. The big picture is a looting of public goods. Students will find it harder to pay off debt. Financial outfits will find it easier to secrete punitive clauses into contracts. People’s health will be damaged by toxins and dirty air. He will leave Washington more corrupt, and forgotten Americans more disenchanted, than he found them.
While Mr Trump keeps us all amused, his crew is turning the swamp into a primeval soup.
edward.luce@ft.com
How is Michael Cohen's 'Truth Fund' faring? - ABC News
How is Michael Cohen's 'Truth Fund' faring?
By SOO RIN KIM Aug 24, 2018.
Michael Cohen has turned to the public after declaring independence from President Donald Trump, and he's having some success.
In just four days since the president's former personal lawyer and fixer pleaded guilty to eight felonies, he has raised more than $155,000 from nearly 3,000 donations through a GoFundMe page asking for help with his legal bills as he goes through a "journey to tell the truth about Donald Trump."
Dubbed the "Michael Cohen Truth Fund," the online fundraiser was set up by Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis on Tuesday, the day Davis says Cohen "made the decision to take legal responsibility" and pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance law violations associated with Trump's campaign for president.
Michael Cohen, longtime personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, exits the United States District Court Southern District of New York, April 16, 2018 in New York City.more +
The two campaign finance violations Cohen pleaded guilty to this week stem from his role in alleged hush-money agreements with two women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who say they had affairs with Trump. The president has denied both women's allegations.
Cohen said in a court statement that he made those payments "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office," referring to then-candidate Trump, and added that he participated in the transactions with the principal purpose of influencing an election.
"This is Michael fulfilling his promise made on July 2nd to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump," Davis told ABC News, referring to comments Cohen made in an interview with ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Support for Cohen's declaration of independence ranges from an anonymous $50,000 donation to small donations of less than $50, as well as help from his personal friends.
Felix Karafin, a longtime friend of Cohen who made two $500 donations to Cohen's fund, told ABC News that he gave money to the fund for two reasons.
"I love Michael, and I want Trump out," Karafin said.
Karafin, a New York-based physician, said that Cohen is not like the bad person as he's portrayed in the media, but rather an "essential giver" who's willing to help out anyone around him. He added that Cohen has gone through a severe emotional and financial hardship under an aggressive prosecution.
Grayson Everett, who runs a political consulting firm, told ABC News that he donated $100 to the fund because he thinks highly of Cohen's stated intention to cooperate with any investigative agencies.
"It took a lot of courage for Michael Cohen to plead guilty to 8 counts of some serious financial crimes," Everett said.
Trump's current personal attorney Rudy Giuliani insisted that the charges against Cohen don't implicate the president and instead attacked Cohen on his past record of reversing his statements.
"It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen's actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time,” Giuliani said in a statement.
In January, when the Wall Street Journal first revealed the Daniels’ deal, Cohen insisted that he had acted on his own in the Daniels deal and that he had not been reimbursed by the campaign or the Trump Organization, contrary to his recent court statement that he had acted under Trump's direction.
Everett, however, said he doesn't doubt the sincerity of Cohen's sworn statements before the court on Tuesday.
"I think he has every idea how much is at stake and how long of a road he has to go," Everett said. "Not only is he up against a billionaire, he also has to deal with the wrath of a runaway presidency. I think this case presents a refreshing opportunity for truth to win out over power."
Trump, who had previously said that Cohen would remain loyal to him and "never flip" mocked his former lawyer, calling his professional competence into question.
"If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!" the president tweeted Wednesday morning.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!
10:44 PM - Aug 22, 2018
Cohen is just the latest addition to the long line of embattled former Trump aides or advisers caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation who have turned to online crowdfunding to help pay for snowballing legal fees, including former Trump campaign aides Roger Stone, Michael Caputo and George Papadopoulos.
Among them, Caputo has had the most success with his GoFundMe page so far, raising more than $334,000 since April this year. Caputo is now helping out with legal bills of others facing the Mueller probe, including former Trump campaign national security adviser J. D. Gordon and former Stone aide Andrew Miller, who has recently been subpoenaed by the special counsel.
By SOO RIN KIM Aug 24, 2018.
Michael Cohen has turned to the public after declaring independence from President Donald Trump, and he's having some success.
In just four days since the president's former personal lawyer and fixer pleaded guilty to eight felonies, he has raised more than $155,000 from nearly 3,000 donations through a GoFundMe page asking for help with his legal bills as he goes through a "journey to tell the truth about Donald Trump."
Dubbed the "Michael Cohen Truth Fund," the online fundraiser was set up by Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis on Tuesday, the day Davis says Cohen "made the decision to take legal responsibility" and pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance law violations associated with Trump's campaign for president.
Michael Cohen, longtime personal lawyer and confidante for President Donald Trump, exits the United States District Court Southern District of New York, April 16, 2018 in New York City.more +
The two campaign finance violations Cohen pleaded guilty to this week stem from his role in alleged hush-money agreements with two women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who say they had affairs with Trump. The president has denied both women's allegations.
Cohen said in a court statement that he made those payments "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office," referring to then-candidate Trump, and added that he participated in the transactions with the principal purpose of influencing an election.
"This is Michael fulfilling his promise made on July 2nd to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump," Davis told ABC News, referring to comments Cohen made in an interview with ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Support for Cohen's declaration of independence ranges from an anonymous $50,000 donation to small donations of less than $50, as well as help from his personal friends.
Felix Karafin, a longtime friend of Cohen who made two $500 donations to Cohen's fund, told ABC News that he gave money to the fund for two reasons.
"I love Michael, and I want Trump out," Karafin said.
Karafin, a New York-based physician, said that Cohen is not like the bad person as he's portrayed in the media, but rather an "essential giver" who's willing to help out anyone around him. He added that Cohen has gone through a severe emotional and financial hardship under an aggressive prosecution.
Grayson Everett, who runs a political consulting firm, told ABC News that he donated $100 to the fund because he thinks highly of Cohen's stated intention to cooperate with any investigative agencies.
"It took a lot of courage for Michael Cohen to plead guilty to 8 counts of some serious financial crimes," Everett said.
Trump's current personal attorney Rudy Giuliani insisted that the charges against Cohen don't implicate the president and instead attacked Cohen on his past record of reversing his statements.
"It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen's actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time,” Giuliani said in a statement.
In January, when the Wall Street Journal first revealed the Daniels’ deal, Cohen insisted that he had acted on his own in the Daniels deal and that he had not been reimbursed by the campaign or the Trump Organization, contrary to his recent court statement that he had acted under Trump's direction.
Everett, however, said he doesn't doubt the sincerity of Cohen's sworn statements before the court on Tuesday.
"I think he has every idea how much is at stake and how long of a road he has to go," Everett said. "Not only is he up against a billionaire, he also has to deal with the wrath of a runaway presidency. I think this case presents a refreshing opportunity for truth to win out over power."
Trump, who had previously said that Cohen would remain loyal to him and "never flip" mocked his former lawyer, calling his professional competence into question.
"If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!" the president tweeted Wednesday morning.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!
10:44 PM - Aug 22, 2018
Cohen is just the latest addition to the long line of embattled former Trump aides or advisers caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation who have turned to online crowdfunding to help pay for snowballing legal fees, including former Trump campaign aides Roger Stone, Michael Caputo and George Papadopoulos.
Among them, Caputo has had the most success with his GoFundMe page so far, raising more than $334,000 since April this year. Caputo is now helping out with legal bills of others facing the Mueller probe, including former Trump campaign national security adviser J. D. Gordon and former Stone aide Andrew Miller, who has recently been subpoenaed by the special counsel.
Didi Chuxing suspends carpool service after woman killed - BBC News
August 26, 2018.
Didi Chuxing suspends carpool service after woman killed
This is the latest instance of violence against Didi passengers
China's ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has suspended its carpool service after police said a driver raped and killed a female passenger.
A company statement said the incident showed there were deficiencies in its processes, and so it would suspend its Hitch system for re-evaluation.
Authorities said the 20-year-old woman hailed the ride on Friday in the eastern city of Wenzhou.
A similar incident happened just months ago.
In May the company suspended and changed Didi Hitch, which pairs car owners and passengers, after a 21-year-old flight attendant died after using the service in Zhengzhou.
China car app plans change after murder
Women switch gender on China taxi app after murder
China's Uber says it's time to go global
In the latest incident, police said the woman got into the taxi at 1300 local time (0500 GMT) and messaged a friend for help an hour later before losing contact.
Authorities detained the 27-year-old driver named Zhong early on Saturday morning, who confessed to raping and murdering his passenger, police said.
The body has been recovered and the investigation is ongoing, the statement said.
Didi Chuxing is the clear market leader in China
Didi Chuxing said Zhong had no previous criminal record, but admitted there had been a previous complaint made against him.
A previous passenger allegedly said the driver had taken them to a remote place and followed them after they left the car.
"The incident shows the many deficiencies with our customer service processes," Didi's statement read, saying this was "too high a cost to pay".
The company also fired the head and vice president of Hitch.
Didi Chuxing is the world's largest ride-hail company by number of trips, reportedly completing more than one billion journeys in the past three years.
In 2016, US taxi app Uber agreed to sell its local business to Didi after failing to make a profit.
Didi Chuxing suspends carpool service after woman killed
This is the latest instance of violence against Didi passengers
China's ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has suspended its carpool service after police said a driver raped and killed a female passenger.
A company statement said the incident showed there were deficiencies in its processes, and so it would suspend its Hitch system for re-evaluation.
Authorities said the 20-year-old woman hailed the ride on Friday in the eastern city of Wenzhou.
A similar incident happened just months ago.
In May the company suspended and changed Didi Hitch, which pairs car owners and passengers, after a 21-year-old flight attendant died after using the service in Zhengzhou.
China car app plans change after murder
Women switch gender on China taxi app after murder
China's Uber says it's time to go global
In the latest incident, police said the woman got into the taxi at 1300 local time (0500 GMT) and messaged a friend for help an hour later before losing contact.
Authorities detained the 27-year-old driver named Zhong early on Saturday morning, who confessed to raping and murdering his passenger, police said.
The body has been recovered and the investigation is ongoing, the statement said.
Didi Chuxing is the clear market leader in China
Didi Chuxing said Zhong had no previous criminal record, but admitted there had been a previous complaint made against him.
A previous passenger allegedly said the driver had taken them to a remote place and followed them after they left the car.
"The incident shows the many deficiencies with our customer service processes," Didi's statement read, saying this was "too high a cost to pay".
The company also fired the head and vice president of Hitch.
Didi Chuxing is the world's largest ride-hail company by number of trips, reportedly completing more than one billion journeys in the past three years.
In 2016, US taxi app Uber agreed to sell its local business to Didi after failing to make a profit.
The key moments in John McCain's life - BBC News
August 26, 2018.
The key moments in John McCain's life
By Anthony Zurcher
North America reporter
Born on the eve of World War Two, John McCain came of age with the dawn of the US as a global superpower.
His lifetime spanned an arc across what Henry Luce once predicted would be the American Century - a time when US political, military and cultural power was unrivalled across the globe.
He fought in Vietnam and suffered the ravages of captivity as the US itself was wracked by doubt and anger over an inability to achieve victory in South-East Asia.
He became a rising star in US politics, only to nearly succumb to the temptations and corruptions of money and influence in American democracy.
He mounted an anti-establishment presidential campaign that presaged the anger and longing for authenticity that would later sweep through US politics.
He won the Republican presidential nomination as that fervour began to curdle, turning against him and the established order in his party.
In McCain's last days, he offered a full-throated defence of the idea that an internationalist, engaged American nation could serve as a guide to friends and a bulwark against foes - and railed against the man, Donald Trump, who campaigned against this world view.
McCain exits the stage at what is, perhaps, the twilight of the American century, when the nation has focused inward, concerned about potential dangers of immigration, the entanglements of multilateralism and the challenges of a global economy.
Here are six moments of McCain's life that reflect the American history he lived through.
The image is striking. A gaunt McCain, aged 36, dressed in rumpled civilian clothes, marching along with fellow American prisoners of war to a US military transport plane that would take them to freedom.
More than five years of captivity in a Vietnam prison had aged him. McCain's hair had been dark when his jet was shot down by a surface-to-air missile during a mission over Hanoi. Now it was grey and white.
He walked with a limp - the product of injuries sustained from ejecting from his damaged plane, as well as torture at the hands of his Vietnamese captors. At a White House reception a month later with President Richard Nixon, McCain relied on crutches to walk.
He never fully recovered from his wounds. The limp would mostly disappear, but for the rest of his life he was unable to raise his arms above his head.
Political consultant Mark McKinnon, who advised McCain during his 2008 presidential run, describes helping brush the candidate's hair while they were waiting behind a van together before a public event in New Hampshire.
"It was just a vulnerable moment of this proud soldier," he said. "And so I combed his hair, and he left to walk into the crowd. I turned away and just wept."
Although McCain would remain in the military for eight years after his return to the US, the day of his release from Vietnam marked the pivotal moment of a military career that was seemingly ordained from birth.
Both his father and his grandfather were Navy admirals, the latter commanding a carrier group that fought against Japan in World War Two
McCain followed in their footsteps, attending the US Naval Academy, where friends said he sometimes struggled with the military tradition he was expected to follow.
"He felt like he didn't have a choice," says Frank Gamboa, one of McCain's roommates when the two men were midshipmen at the US Naval Academy. "One of the burdens of having a family legacy is you can't be your own self."
Throughout his time at the academy, McCain rebelled. He earned the nickname "John Wayne" McCain for his attitude and popularity with the opposite sex. He collected demerits the way some people collect stamps. He seemed perennially on the verge of failing out of school, and graduated near the bottom of his class.
McCain did occasionally use his family background as a shield. Gamboa describes one instance where McCain upbraided a senior classmate for being abusive to a Filipino steward during dinner - a bit of insubordination that could have landed him with a disciplinary report.
When the man asked for his name, McCain replied: "John S McCain III. What's yours?" Upon hearing the name, according to Gamboa, the man skulked off.
As a prisoner of war McCain had another opportunity to use his family name to avoid trouble - and declined. When his captors learned he was the son of an admiral, he was offered early release. McCain refused - insisting that those who were captured before him should go first.
Obituary: Senator John McCain
John McCain: Before he was a politician
"The interrogator told McCain things certainly are going to go very bad for you," Gamboa says. "And that's when they started torturing him. It was a momentous and courageous decision to literally turn down freedom for the sake of his fellow POWs."
McCain would spend years in solitary confinement, being tortured by the Vietnamese. He would eventually relent and sign a "confession" he had committed war crimes. He never sought or received special treatment because of his parentage, however, and when he left Vietnam he did so with his fellow prisoners.
Elected to Congress
2 November 1982
McCain made his entry into politics by winning an open seat in a reliably Republican Phoenix-area US congressional district. He had moved to Arizona shortly after marrying his second wife, Cindy, and spent some time working for her father, a wealthy Phoenix businessman, where he made the kind of influential connections that would help support his congressional bid.
"I was not at all surprised that he went into politics," Gamboa says. "He had no more career left in the Navy. He wasn't going to get the assignments that he would need to make admiral, so remaining as a captain until retirement was not in his interests."
The highlight of his first campaign was a Republican primary debate, when one of his opponents questioned McCain's ties to his newly adopted home state.
McCain, his temper flashing, shot back.
"Listen, pal, I spent 22 years in the Navy," he said. "My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi."
McCain would go on to win the primary by 6% over his nearest competitor. He would win more than double the votes of his Democratic opponent in the November general election.
In his 2002 memoir, McCain said that he thought his debate performance won the election - although it wasn't part of a grand campaign strategy.
"I was just mad and had taken a swing," he wrote.
McCain arrived as a freshman congressman in Washington with strong connections already in place. Prior to leaving the armed forces, he had served as Navy liaison to Congress and had forged ties with politicians and staffers in the Capitol. It was the same position McCain's father held when McCain was a teenager.
But McCain "was always different," says biographer Elizabeth Drew. "He was different in the prison camp and different in Congress."
While his record in the House was fairly conventional, "he was never was just one of the boys," Drew says. "There were pictures all over the place of this man, bedridden in a prison camp, so he always stood out from your run-of-the-mill politicians."
McCain was elected president of his congressional class. On one of his first high-profile votes, he broke with his party and president, Ronald Reagan, in opposing a US military deployment to Lebanon - a position that would be vindicated just a month later, when 241 US Marines and 58 French soldiers were killed in a suicide attack on their military compound.
McCain went back to Vietnam several times, including here in 1992
In his second term, he landed a plum position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1985 he would return to Vietnam with legendary CBS television presenter Walter Cronkite, where he posed for photographs by a monument to the anti-aircraft battery that shot down his plane.
A US political magazine labelled him a "Republican on the rise".
A year later, he would run for, and win, a seat in the US Senate from Arizona. He replaced Barry Goldwater, the godfather of the US conservative movement and the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.
It was an office he held for the remaining 31 years of his life.
Cleared in corruption scandal
20 November 1991
One of the realities of American politics is that candidates and officeholders have to engage in a nearly endless effort to raise the funds necessary to run for office and win re-election.
It was a lesson McCain learned as he was courting Phoenix-area businessmen and wealthy donors prior to his first run for Congress. And it was one of those businessmen, banker and real-estate developer Charles Keating, who nearly destroyed McCain's political career.
The scandal that engulfed him grew out of the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, when a combination of lax financial regulation and business corruption led to the collapse of more than a thousand financial institutions. Keating feared his firm, Lincoln Savings and Loan, was being targeted for increased scrutiny from government regulators and in danger of failing.
He urged his friends in the US Senate - men whose campaigns he had supported - to convince federal officials to go easy on Lincoln. One of those men was McCain, who in addition to taking campaign contributions from Keating, had gone on several vacations to the Bahamas courtesy of the businessman.
The time when America stopped being great
McCain jabs at Trump Vietnam deferment
McCain sat in on two meetings between senators and regulators to review the matter. The five senators, simply by their presence, showed regulators that Keating had powerful friends. McCain said he only wanted to make sure Lincoln was being treated fairly.
In the second gathering, McCain learned that Lincoln was being referred to the justice department for criminal prosecution. At that point, the Arizona senator dropped the matter - but he had held his hand close to the flame. It wasn't long before the whole matter went public, and McCain felt the heat.
Lincoln collapsed, US taxpayers were out more than $2bn in deposit insurance payments, and Keating was indicted and convicted of fraud. McCain and the other four senators in the meetings became the face of corrupt political influence and the corrosive effects of campaign contributions.
They were given a nickname, the Keating Five, and the Senate Ethics Committee opened an investigation into the matter.
After originally bristling at the scrutiny - snapping at reporters who questioned his actions - McCain changed tactics, holding press conferences and openly admitting he acted improperly. In the end, the Senate investigation largely exonerated McCain, finding only that he had shown "poor judgement" in the matter.
Media captionCancer-hit Senator John McCain: To hell with loudmouths!
McCain would later call the Keating scandal a "hell of a mess" and an "asterisk" that would haunt his political career.
"This stayed by his name," says Drew, "and it bothered him a lot."
The senator would go on to make campaign finance reform one of his central legislative goals. His work would eventually lead to passage of a landmark bill in 2002 that curtailed the influence of unregulated donations to political party committees as well as limited political speech by independent groups. The latter provision would eventually be struck down by the Supreme Court.
Brooke Buchanan, who worked on McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and later served as communications director in his Senate office, says fund-raising was the part of politics McCain found particularly distasteful.
"That was something throughout his career, his view of money in politics and the corrosive aspect of it," she says. "He did not keep those opinions to himself."
In 2000, George W Bush was the establishment pick for the Republican presidential nomination - back when that actually meant something.
McCain almost won anyway.
The Arizona senator ran a low-budget, media-friendly campaign best known for the candidate's free-wheeling style, as he toured New Hampshire - a key early primary state - on a bus nicknamed the "Straight-Talk Express".
He won the state by 18 points, a stunning victory that sent the Bush campaign scrambling and set up an electoral showdown two weeks later in the South Carolina primary.
US Senator John McCain and his wife Cindy speak with reporters as they travel from Columbia to Sumter, South Carolina 07 Jan 2000
If McCain could post a win there, the veneer of inevitability that had insulated Bush would crumble, and ease McCain's path to the nomination. An earlier 50-point Bush national lead had vanished in the New England snow, and South Carolina was now a dead heat.
McKinnon, who worked on the Bush team in 2000, says McCain "just kicked our butts in New Hampshire".
It wasn't a mortal blow, however, and the Bush team made the decision to go negative on McCain and go hard. If their man was going to lose, he'd do it swinging.
On the record, Bush's supporters began criticising McCain's Senate voting record and attempting to undermine his reformer credentials. Their candidate adopted the slogan: "A reformer with results".
Off the record, things turned ugly. Rumours started spreading - fuelled by anonymously delivered pamphlets, emails and automated phone calls - that McCain had fathered an illegitimate, interracial child. (McCain and his wife had adopted a girl from Bangladesh, and her photograph was used in some of the material).
There were other elements of the whisper campaign - hushed questions about McCain's mental health, wild claims he was a "Manchurian candidate" programmed by his North Vietnamese captors, and rumours that he slept with prostitutes.
"It got really nasty," McKinnon says, admitting the Bush campaign knew there were third parties "doing all sorts of crazy stuff" but had no part in it. "It would have been a crime if we had co-ordinated."
McCain didn't help himself with South Carolina conservatives either, saying at one point that he believed the Confederate battle flag, which at the time flew over the state's capitol, was a "symbol of racism and slavery".
He later backed off that statement, calling the flag part of the South's "heritage", managing to disappoint both sides on a divisive topic.
He also criticised Bob Jones University, the South Carolina Christian college that prohibited interracial dating, where Bush had recently given a speech.
"McCain was not very good at cultivating evangelical support, and he thought they were intolerant," Drew says.
"He denounced them and their role in politics, which might have been correct, but it wasn't the political thing to do."
'A reformer with results' appears on George W Bush campaign signs ahead of South Carolina's primary
When the Bush fusillade began, McCain's first response was to hit back. His campaign aired a television spot comparing Bush to then-President Bill Clinton - a move the then-Texas governor called "as low a blow as you can give". McCain would later order an end to his negative adverts after a woman at a town hall forum told him her son had become distraught after receiving a Bush campaign call that labelled the Arizona senator a liar and a cheat.
Bush ended up taking the South Carolina primary by 11 points. The Arizona senator would win a few more contests, but the well-financed and organised Bush machine regrouped and ground him down.
Those heady days after New Hampshire in 2000 were probably as close to the presidency as McCain came in his life. Bush, with a strong conservative tailwind, went on to defeat Al Gore later that year.
"If the campaign had ended in South Carolina a day or two earlier, McCain would have won," McKinnon says. "And he would have won the presidency."
McCain went back to the Senate and focused on passing campaign finance reform, biding his time until 2008, and making the kind of establishment connections to ensure his next bid for the presidency would begin from a position of strength.
Rejects Obama conspiracy theories
10 October 2008
By the time of McCain's trip to Lakeville, Minnesota, for the kind of town hall forum he'd been doing throughout the campaign, his 2008 presidential bid was in trouble. He was trailing in the polls, and the stock market was in freefall.
McCain's surprise pick for vice-president, little-known Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, was "going rogue" - lashing out at Democrats, questioning Obama's patriotism and accusing him of "palling around with terrorists".
She was giving voice to a Republican base growing increasingly unsettled and angry at the prospect of an Obama presidency after eight years of Republican rule. Some conservative talking heads and grassroots fringe groups were questioning Obama's citizenship, religious affiliation and eligibility to run for president.
It all came to a head at a high school gymnasium in Lakeville.
When one supporter said he was "scared" of an Obama presidency, McCain replied that the then-senator from Illinois was a decent person. The audience booed, as members of the crowd shouted that the Democratic nominee was a liar and a terrorist.
Then an older woman with frazzled white hair said she could not trust Obama, adding she had "read about him" and "he's an Arab". McCain shook his head and took the microphone back.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
"No, ma'am," McCain said. "He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about."
Brooke Buchanan, McCain's campaign press secretary, was standing by him at the Lakeland event and says she could tell it was a fiery atmosphere in the high school gym that day - and that McCain would probably pay a political price for his answer.
"We dealt with that the entire campaign because there is a Republican base who believed in that," Buchanan says. "But at that point it didn't matter. It wasn't the right thing, and it wasn't the way that Senator McCain wanted to run his campaign."
Over the course of the Obama presidency, the anger and resentment within portions of the Republican base that McCain had tried to confront in Minnesota grew more prominent. The party started to look more like Palin - a harbinger of Mr Trump's unvarnished conservative populism - and less like the Arizona senator.
"McCain was trying to carve out a new kind of Republican party, trying to move it to be a more centrist, forgiving kind of party," Drew says. "He was leading a movement to do it. But in the end, there were forces bigger than them."
'No' on Obamacare repeal
28 July 2017
It was the middle of the night when Brooke Buchanan's phone rang. It was McCain. She no longer worked for the senator, but the two still talked almost daily.
"Get up," he said. "Turn on your TV. We're going to be making some news."
The US Senate was considering whether to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act, a comprehensive health-insurance regulation law that was Obama's signature legislative achievement.
The fate of the bill hung in the balance, as only one more "no" vote would kill the legislation and McCain was one of the few remaining undecideds. It was almost 1:30 in the morning.
Media captionWatch reactions to his "no" vote against repealing the Obama-era healthcare law
As Buchanan watched on her television, McCain walked out on to the Senate floor and turned to the clerk tabulating votes. He held out his right arm - the one that hadn't been repeatedly broken in Vietnam - and gave a quick thumbs-down.
"No," McCain said quietly, then sat down at his desk in the Senate chamber, as Republicans gasped and Democrats erupted in cheers. McCain - who had flown back from Arizona for the vote after undergoing emergency surgery for his recently diagnosed brain tumour - had bucked his party's leadership one last time.
He had defied President Trump, the man who had stunned Washington when he questioned McCain's heroism as a prisoner of war.
"I just had a huge grin on my face," Buchanan says. "I was proud of him for it. It was a tough decision to take, but again it was one of those times when the true McCain shined."
Buchanan says McCain voted no, in part, to allow other Republican senators who had misgivings about the repeal legislation, including his friend Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to vote in favour and avoid angering the pro-repeal Republican base.
McCain on his way to the healthcare vote he would eventually kill
"He figured he had nothing to lose," she says.
It was McCain's most direct break with Mr Trump, but since then he stepped up his criticism. He denounced the president for striking a deferential tone with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and the senator has condemned Mr Trump's attacks on the FBI and US intelligence services.
He also took swipes at him in a memoir released shortly before his death.
"The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values," he wrote. "Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity."
He also, according to the New York Times, told friends he did not want the president at his funeral - a final rebuke of the man who won the office McCain sought twice, but never achieved.
"I don't know if they've ever made them like McCain or they ever will," McKinnon says.
"He was great, but also vulnerable. He was not perfect, but he was the first one to admit that.
"He had low moments when he was a prisoner of war and low moments when he was in the Senate, but he never shied away from saying he was an imperfect human being, but at the end of the day it's my job to serve this country, and that's what he did."
The key moments in John McCain's life
By Anthony Zurcher
North America reporter
Born on the eve of World War Two, John McCain came of age with the dawn of the US as a global superpower.
His lifetime spanned an arc across what Henry Luce once predicted would be the American Century - a time when US political, military and cultural power was unrivalled across the globe.
He fought in Vietnam and suffered the ravages of captivity as the US itself was wracked by doubt and anger over an inability to achieve victory in South-East Asia.
He became a rising star in US politics, only to nearly succumb to the temptations and corruptions of money and influence in American democracy.
He mounted an anti-establishment presidential campaign that presaged the anger and longing for authenticity that would later sweep through US politics.
He won the Republican presidential nomination as that fervour began to curdle, turning against him and the established order in his party.
In McCain's last days, he offered a full-throated defence of the idea that an internationalist, engaged American nation could serve as a guide to friends and a bulwark against foes - and railed against the man, Donald Trump, who campaigned against this world view.
McCain exits the stage at what is, perhaps, the twilight of the American century, when the nation has focused inward, concerned about potential dangers of immigration, the entanglements of multilateralism and the challenges of a global economy.
Here are six moments of McCain's life that reflect the American history he lived through.
The image is striking. A gaunt McCain, aged 36, dressed in rumpled civilian clothes, marching along with fellow American prisoners of war to a US military transport plane that would take them to freedom.
More than five years of captivity in a Vietnam prison had aged him. McCain's hair had been dark when his jet was shot down by a surface-to-air missile during a mission over Hanoi. Now it was grey and white.
He walked with a limp - the product of injuries sustained from ejecting from his damaged plane, as well as torture at the hands of his Vietnamese captors. At a White House reception a month later with President Richard Nixon, McCain relied on crutches to walk.
He never fully recovered from his wounds. The limp would mostly disappear, but for the rest of his life he was unable to raise his arms above his head.
Political consultant Mark McKinnon, who advised McCain during his 2008 presidential run, describes helping brush the candidate's hair while they were waiting behind a van together before a public event in New Hampshire.
"It was just a vulnerable moment of this proud soldier," he said. "And so I combed his hair, and he left to walk into the crowd. I turned away and just wept."
Although McCain would remain in the military for eight years after his return to the US, the day of his release from Vietnam marked the pivotal moment of a military career that was seemingly ordained from birth.
Both his father and his grandfather were Navy admirals, the latter commanding a carrier group that fought against Japan in World War Two
McCain followed in their footsteps, attending the US Naval Academy, where friends said he sometimes struggled with the military tradition he was expected to follow.
"He felt like he didn't have a choice," says Frank Gamboa, one of McCain's roommates when the two men were midshipmen at the US Naval Academy. "One of the burdens of having a family legacy is you can't be your own self."
Throughout his time at the academy, McCain rebelled. He earned the nickname "John Wayne" McCain for his attitude and popularity with the opposite sex. He collected demerits the way some people collect stamps. He seemed perennially on the verge of failing out of school, and graduated near the bottom of his class.
McCain did occasionally use his family background as a shield. Gamboa describes one instance where McCain upbraided a senior classmate for being abusive to a Filipino steward during dinner - a bit of insubordination that could have landed him with a disciplinary report.
When the man asked for his name, McCain replied: "John S McCain III. What's yours?" Upon hearing the name, according to Gamboa, the man skulked off.
As a prisoner of war McCain had another opportunity to use his family name to avoid trouble - and declined. When his captors learned he was the son of an admiral, he was offered early release. McCain refused - insisting that those who were captured before him should go first.
Obituary: Senator John McCain
John McCain: Before he was a politician
"The interrogator told McCain things certainly are going to go very bad for you," Gamboa says. "And that's when they started torturing him. It was a momentous and courageous decision to literally turn down freedom for the sake of his fellow POWs."
McCain would spend years in solitary confinement, being tortured by the Vietnamese. He would eventually relent and sign a "confession" he had committed war crimes. He never sought or received special treatment because of his parentage, however, and when he left Vietnam he did so with his fellow prisoners.
Elected to Congress
2 November 1982
McCain made his entry into politics by winning an open seat in a reliably Republican Phoenix-area US congressional district. He had moved to Arizona shortly after marrying his second wife, Cindy, and spent some time working for her father, a wealthy Phoenix businessman, where he made the kind of influential connections that would help support his congressional bid.
"I was not at all surprised that he went into politics," Gamboa says. "He had no more career left in the Navy. He wasn't going to get the assignments that he would need to make admiral, so remaining as a captain until retirement was not in his interests."
The highlight of his first campaign was a Republican primary debate, when one of his opponents questioned McCain's ties to his newly adopted home state.
McCain, his temper flashing, shot back.
"Listen, pal, I spent 22 years in the Navy," he said. "My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi."
McCain would go on to win the primary by 6% over his nearest competitor. He would win more than double the votes of his Democratic opponent in the November general election.
In his 2002 memoir, McCain said that he thought his debate performance won the election - although it wasn't part of a grand campaign strategy.
"I was just mad and had taken a swing," he wrote.
McCain arrived as a freshman congressman in Washington with strong connections already in place. Prior to leaving the armed forces, he had served as Navy liaison to Congress and had forged ties with politicians and staffers in the Capitol. It was the same position McCain's father held when McCain was a teenager.
But McCain "was always different," says biographer Elizabeth Drew. "He was different in the prison camp and different in Congress."
While his record in the House was fairly conventional, "he was never was just one of the boys," Drew says. "There were pictures all over the place of this man, bedridden in a prison camp, so he always stood out from your run-of-the-mill politicians."
McCain was elected president of his congressional class. On one of his first high-profile votes, he broke with his party and president, Ronald Reagan, in opposing a US military deployment to Lebanon - a position that would be vindicated just a month later, when 241 US Marines and 58 French soldiers were killed in a suicide attack on their military compound.
McCain went back to Vietnam several times, including here in 1992
In his second term, he landed a plum position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1985 he would return to Vietnam with legendary CBS television presenter Walter Cronkite, where he posed for photographs by a monument to the anti-aircraft battery that shot down his plane.
A US political magazine labelled him a "Republican on the rise".
A year later, he would run for, and win, a seat in the US Senate from Arizona. He replaced Barry Goldwater, the godfather of the US conservative movement and the Republican presidential nominee in 1964.
It was an office he held for the remaining 31 years of his life.
Cleared in corruption scandal
20 November 1991
One of the realities of American politics is that candidates and officeholders have to engage in a nearly endless effort to raise the funds necessary to run for office and win re-election.
It was a lesson McCain learned as he was courting Phoenix-area businessmen and wealthy donors prior to his first run for Congress. And it was one of those businessmen, banker and real-estate developer Charles Keating, who nearly destroyed McCain's political career.
The scandal that engulfed him grew out of the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, when a combination of lax financial regulation and business corruption led to the collapse of more than a thousand financial institutions. Keating feared his firm, Lincoln Savings and Loan, was being targeted for increased scrutiny from government regulators and in danger of failing.
He urged his friends in the US Senate - men whose campaigns he had supported - to convince federal officials to go easy on Lincoln. One of those men was McCain, who in addition to taking campaign contributions from Keating, had gone on several vacations to the Bahamas courtesy of the businessman.
The time when America stopped being great
McCain jabs at Trump Vietnam deferment
McCain sat in on two meetings between senators and regulators to review the matter. The five senators, simply by their presence, showed regulators that Keating had powerful friends. McCain said he only wanted to make sure Lincoln was being treated fairly.
In the second gathering, McCain learned that Lincoln was being referred to the justice department for criminal prosecution. At that point, the Arizona senator dropped the matter - but he had held his hand close to the flame. It wasn't long before the whole matter went public, and McCain felt the heat.
Lincoln collapsed, US taxpayers were out more than $2bn in deposit insurance payments, and Keating was indicted and convicted of fraud. McCain and the other four senators in the meetings became the face of corrupt political influence and the corrosive effects of campaign contributions.
They were given a nickname, the Keating Five, and the Senate Ethics Committee opened an investigation into the matter.
After originally bristling at the scrutiny - snapping at reporters who questioned his actions - McCain changed tactics, holding press conferences and openly admitting he acted improperly. In the end, the Senate investigation largely exonerated McCain, finding only that he had shown "poor judgement" in the matter.
Media captionCancer-hit Senator John McCain: To hell with loudmouths!
McCain would later call the Keating scandal a "hell of a mess" and an "asterisk" that would haunt his political career.
"This stayed by his name," says Drew, "and it bothered him a lot."
The senator would go on to make campaign finance reform one of his central legislative goals. His work would eventually lead to passage of a landmark bill in 2002 that curtailed the influence of unregulated donations to political party committees as well as limited political speech by independent groups. The latter provision would eventually be struck down by the Supreme Court.
Brooke Buchanan, who worked on McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and later served as communications director in his Senate office, says fund-raising was the part of politics McCain found particularly distasteful.
"That was something throughout his career, his view of money in politics and the corrosive aspect of it," she says. "He did not keep those opinions to himself."
In 2000, George W Bush was the establishment pick for the Republican presidential nomination - back when that actually meant something.
McCain almost won anyway.
The Arizona senator ran a low-budget, media-friendly campaign best known for the candidate's free-wheeling style, as he toured New Hampshire - a key early primary state - on a bus nicknamed the "Straight-Talk Express".
He won the state by 18 points, a stunning victory that sent the Bush campaign scrambling and set up an electoral showdown two weeks later in the South Carolina primary.
US Senator John McCain and his wife Cindy speak with reporters as they travel from Columbia to Sumter, South Carolina 07 Jan 2000
If McCain could post a win there, the veneer of inevitability that had insulated Bush would crumble, and ease McCain's path to the nomination. An earlier 50-point Bush national lead had vanished in the New England snow, and South Carolina was now a dead heat.
McKinnon, who worked on the Bush team in 2000, says McCain "just kicked our butts in New Hampshire".
It wasn't a mortal blow, however, and the Bush team made the decision to go negative on McCain and go hard. If their man was going to lose, he'd do it swinging.
On the record, Bush's supporters began criticising McCain's Senate voting record and attempting to undermine his reformer credentials. Their candidate adopted the slogan: "A reformer with results".
Off the record, things turned ugly. Rumours started spreading - fuelled by anonymously delivered pamphlets, emails and automated phone calls - that McCain had fathered an illegitimate, interracial child. (McCain and his wife had adopted a girl from Bangladesh, and her photograph was used in some of the material).
There were other elements of the whisper campaign - hushed questions about McCain's mental health, wild claims he was a "Manchurian candidate" programmed by his North Vietnamese captors, and rumours that he slept with prostitutes.
"It got really nasty," McKinnon says, admitting the Bush campaign knew there were third parties "doing all sorts of crazy stuff" but had no part in it. "It would have been a crime if we had co-ordinated."
McCain didn't help himself with South Carolina conservatives either, saying at one point that he believed the Confederate battle flag, which at the time flew over the state's capitol, was a "symbol of racism and slavery".
He later backed off that statement, calling the flag part of the South's "heritage", managing to disappoint both sides on a divisive topic.
He also criticised Bob Jones University, the South Carolina Christian college that prohibited interracial dating, where Bush had recently given a speech.
"McCain was not very good at cultivating evangelical support, and he thought they were intolerant," Drew says.
"He denounced them and their role in politics, which might have been correct, but it wasn't the political thing to do."
'A reformer with results' appears on George W Bush campaign signs ahead of South Carolina's primary
When the Bush fusillade began, McCain's first response was to hit back. His campaign aired a television spot comparing Bush to then-President Bill Clinton - a move the then-Texas governor called "as low a blow as you can give". McCain would later order an end to his negative adverts after a woman at a town hall forum told him her son had become distraught after receiving a Bush campaign call that labelled the Arizona senator a liar and a cheat.
Bush ended up taking the South Carolina primary by 11 points. The Arizona senator would win a few more contests, but the well-financed and organised Bush machine regrouped and ground him down.
Those heady days after New Hampshire in 2000 were probably as close to the presidency as McCain came in his life. Bush, with a strong conservative tailwind, went on to defeat Al Gore later that year.
"If the campaign had ended in South Carolina a day or two earlier, McCain would have won," McKinnon says. "And he would have won the presidency."
McCain went back to the Senate and focused on passing campaign finance reform, biding his time until 2008, and making the kind of establishment connections to ensure his next bid for the presidency would begin from a position of strength.
Rejects Obama conspiracy theories
10 October 2008
By the time of McCain's trip to Lakeville, Minnesota, for the kind of town hall forum he'd been doing throughout the campaign, his 2008 presidential bid was in trouble. He was trailing in the polls, and the stock market was in freefall.
McCain's surprise pick for vice-president, little-known Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, was "going rogue" - lashing out at Democrats, questioning Obama's patriotism and accusing him of "palling around with terrorists".
She was giving voice to a Republican base growing increasingly unsettled and angry at the prospect of an Obama presidency after eight years of Republican rule. Some conservative talking heads and grassroots fringe groups were questioning Obama's citizenship, religious affiliation and eligibility to run for president.
It all came to a head at a high school gymnasium in Lakeville.
When one supporter said he was "scared" of an Obama presidency, McCain replied that the then-senator from Illinois was a decent person. The audience booed, as members of the crowd shouted that the Democratic nominee was a liar and a terrorist.
Then an older woman with frazzled white hair said she could not trust Obama, adding she had "read about him" and "he's an Arab". McCain shook his head and took the microphone back.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
"No, ma'am," McCain said. "He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about."
Brooke Buchanan, McCain's campaign press secretary, was standing by him at the Lakeland event and says she could tell it was a fiery atmosphere in the high school gym that day - and that McCain would probably pay a political price for his answer.
"We dealt with that the entire campaign because there is a Republican base who believed in that," Buchanan says. "But at that point it didn't matter. It wasn't the right thing, and it wasn't the way that Senator McCain wanted to run his campaign."
Over the course of the Obama presidency, the anger and resentment within portions of the Republican base that McCain had tried to confront in Minnesota grew more prominent. The party started to look more like Palin - a harbinger of Mr Trump's unvarnished conservative populism - and less like the Arizona senator.
"McCain was trying to carve out a new kind of Republican party, trying to move it to be a more centrist, forgiving kind of party," Drew says. "He was leading a movement to do it. But in the end, there were forces bigger than them."
'No' on Obamacare repeal
28 July 2017
It was the middle of the night when Brooke Buchanan's phone rang. It was McCain. She no longer worked for the senator, but the two still talked almost daily.
"Get up," he said. "Turn on your TV. We're going to be making some news."
The US Senate was considering whether to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act, a comprehensive health-insurance regulation law that was Obama's signature legislative achievement.
The fate of the bill hung in the balance, as only one more "no" vote would kill the legislation and McCain was one of the few remaining undecideds. It was almost 1:30 in the morning.
Media captionWatch reactions to his "no" vote against repealing the Obama-era healthcare law
As Buchanan watched on her television, McCain walked out on to the Senate floor and turned to the clerk tabulating votes. He held out his right arm - the one that hadn't been repeatedly broken in Vietnam - and gave a quick thumbs-down.
"No," McCain said quietly, then sat down at his desk in the Senate chamber, as Republicans gasped and Democrats erupted in cheers. McCain - who had flown back from Arizona for the vote after undergoing emergency surgery for his recently diagnosed brain tumour - had bucked his party's leadership one last time.
He had defied President Trump, the man who had stunned Washington when he questioned McCain's heroism as a prisoner of war.
"I just had a huge grin on my face," Buchanan says. "I was proud of him for it. It was a tough decision to take, but again it was one of those times when the true McCain shined."
Buchanan says McCain voted no, in part, to allow other Republican senators who had misgivings about the repeal legislation, including his friend Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to vote in favour and avoid angering the pro-repeal Republican base.
McCain on his way to the healthcare vote he would eventually kill
"He figured he had nothing to lose," she says.
It was McCain's most direct break with Mr Trump, but since then he stepped up his criticism. He denounced the president for striking a deferential tone with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and the senator has condemned Mr Trump's attacks on the FBI and US intelligence services.
He also took swipes at him in a memoir released shortly before his death.
"The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values," he wrote. "Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity."
He also, according to the New York Times, told friends he did not want the president at his funeral - a final rebuke of the man who won the office McCain sought twice, but never achieved.
"I don't know if they've ever made them like McCain or they ever will," McKinnon says.
"He was great, but also vulnerable. He was not perfect, but he was the first one to admit that.
"He had low moments when he was a prisoner of war and low moments when he was in the Senate, but he never shied away from saying he was an imperfect human being, but at the end of the day it's my job to serve this country, and that's what he did."
John McCain: Vietnam veteran and six-term senator dies at 81 - BBC News
August 26, 2018.
John McCain: Vietnam veteran and six-term senator dies at 81
Media captionJohn McCain: US war hero, maverick and political titan
Senator John McCain, the Vietnam war hero turned senator and presidential candidate, has died aged 81.
Mr McCain died on Saturday in Arizona surrounded by his family, a statement from his office said.
He was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour in July 2017 and had been undergoing medical treatment.
His family announced on Friday that Mr McCain, who left Washington in December, had decided to cease treatment.
The key moments in John McCain's life
His widow, Cindy, tweeted: "My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years. He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best."
Mr McCain's daughter Meghan said the task of her lifetime would now be "to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love.
Following news of his death, wellwishers waving flags lined the street as a hearse brought Mr McCain's body from his ranch in Sedona, Arizona, to a funeral home in Phoenix.
Mourners waited outside the funeral home in Pheonix, Arizon
The six-term senator for Arizona and 2008 Republican presidential nominee was diagnosed after doctors discovered his tumour during surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye last July.
His family said he would lie in state in Phoenix, Arizona, and in Washington DC before a funeral at the Washington National Cathedral and his burial in Annapolis, Maryland.
Former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush are expected to give eulogies.
The son and grandson of Navy admirals, Mr McCain was a fighter pilot during the war in Vietnam. When his plane was shot down, he spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.
While in the custody of his captors, he suffered torture that left him with lasting disabilities.
In politics, he took a conservative line on many issues, including opposing abortion and advocating higher defence spending. He backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and criticised President Obama for not intervening more in the Syrian civil war.
However, he also gained a reputation as a Republican maverick who was willing to cross party lines on a range of issues.
In July last year, just after his diagnosis, he took part in a late-night Senate session and gave the deciding vote - with a thumbs-down gesture - against partially repealing the contentious Obamacare healthcare law. The move reportedly infuriated Mr Trump.
Mr McCain also criticised President Trump's hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration and his attacks on the media.
McCain fought hard to the very end
By Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter
John McCain was born on the eve of World War II, at the dawn of the "American Century" - a time when the US was at the peak of its political, military and cultural power. He dies at what could be considered that age's twilight, as the nation turns inward and contemplates walls, literal and metaphorical, to insulate itself from the rest of this world.
The life of the senator from Arizona marked the arc of this journey.
He suffered, as the nation suffered, from the morass of Vietnam.
As a young politician he was tempted by the lure of power and money, caught up in an influence-peddling scandal that nearly cost him his career.
In his first run for president in 2000, he capitalised on an anti-establishment sentiment and longing for authenticity that would later come to crest with Donald Trump's election. In 2008, he won the Republican nomination, only to see his hopes dashed by the phenomenon that was Barack Obama and a crumbling US economy.
McCain never won the top political office for which he longed. Throughout his life, however, he offered a full-throated defence of an America that was active and engaged in the world. In his final years he sparred with Mr Trump over the direction of the Republican Party and the principles it should embrace.
It's an open question as to whether these views have a future in his party. McCain, however, fought for what he believed was right until the very end. Agree with him or not, that is undeniably a most appropriate epitaph.
Tributes began to pour in for Mr McCain as soon as the news of his death was announced.
Former President George W Bush described Mr McCain as "a patriot of the highest order", adding: "He was a public servant in the finest traditions of our country. And to me, he was a friend whom I'll deeply miss."
Sarah Palin, who was Mr McCain's running mate during his 2008 bid for president, said the world had lost "an American original", sharing a picture of herself with the man she called her friend.
Donald Trump, whom Mr McCain has strongly criticised, tweeted his "deepest sympathies" to Mr McCain's family but made no comment about his life.
Sources quoted by US media said President Trump would not be invited to the funeral and the current administration would probably be represented by Vice President Mike Pence.
Tributes were also paid from the other side of the political spectrum.
Barack Obama, the Democrat who beat Mr McCain to the presidency, said despite their differences, they shared "a fidelity to something higher - the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed.
"Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did," Mr Obama said. "But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own.
"At John's best, he showed us what that means."
Barack Obama, who ran against Mr McCain in 2008, was among the first to pay tribute
Former vice-president, long-time friend and political opponent Joe Biden said Mr McCain's "impact on America hasn't ended".
"John McCain's life is proof that some truths are timeless," he said in a statement. "Character. Courage. Integrity.
"A life lived embodying those truths casts a long, long shadow. John McCain will cast a long shadow."
John McCain: Vietnam veteran and six-term senator dies at 81
Media captionJohn McCain: US war hero, maverick and political titan
Senator John McCain, the Vietnam war hero turned senator and presidential candidate, has died aged 81.
Mr McCain died on Saturday in Arizona surrounded by his family, a statement from his office said.
He was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour in July 2017 and had been undergoing medical treatment.
His family announced on Friday that Mr McCain, who left Washington in December, had decided to cease treatment.
The key moments in John McCain's life
His widow, Cindy, tweeted: "My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years. He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best."
Mr McCain's daughter Meghan said the task of her lifetime would now be "to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love.
Following news of his death, wellwishers waving flags lined the street as a hearse brought Mr McCain's body from his ranch in Sedona, Arizona, to a funeral home in Phoenix.
Mourners waited outside the funeral home in Pheonix, Arizon
The six-term senator for Arizona and 2008 Republican presidential nominee was diagnosed after doctors discovered his tumour during surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye last July.
His family said he would lie in state in Phoenix, Arizona, and in Washington DC before a funeral at the Washington National Cathedral and his burial in Annapolis, Maryland.
Former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush are expected to give eulogies.
The son and grandson of Navy admirals, Mr McCain was a fighter pilot during the war in Vietnam. When his plane was shot down, he spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.
While in the custody of his captors, he suffered torture that left him with lasting disabilities.
In politics, he took a conservative line on many issues, including opposing abortion and advocating higher defence spending. He backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and criticised President Obama for not intervening more in the Syrian civil war.
However, he also gained a reputation as a Republican maverick who was willing to cross party lines on a range of issues.
In July last year, just after his diagnosis, he took part in a late-night Senate session and gave the deciding vote - with a thumbs-down gesture - against partially repealing the contentious Obamacare healthcare law. The move reportedly infuriated Mr Trump.
Mr McCain also criticised President Trump's hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration and his attacks on the media.
McCain fought hard to the very end
By Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter
John McCain was born on the eve of World War II, at the dawn of the "American Century" - a time when the US was at the peak of its political, military and cultural power. He dies at what could be considered that age's twilight, as the nation turns inward and contemplates walls, literal and metaphorical, to insulate itself from the rest of this world.
The life of the senator from Arizona marked the arc of this journey.
He suffered, as the nation suffered, from the morass of Vietnam.
As a young politician he was tempted by the lure of power and money, caught up in an influence-peddling scandal that nearly cost him his career.
In his first run for president in 2000, he capitalised on an anti-establishment sentiment and longing for authenticity that would later come to crest with Donald Trump's election. In 2008, he won the Republican nomination, only to see his hopes dashed by the phenomenon that was Barack Obama and a crumbling US economy.
McCain never won the top political office for which he longed. Throughout his life, however, he offered a full-throated defence of an America that was active and engaged in the world. In his final years he sparred with Mr Trump over the direction of the Republican Party and the principles it should embrace.
It's an open question as to whether these views have a future in his party. McCain, however, fought for what he believed was right until the very end. Agree with him or not, that is undeniably a most appropriate epitaph.
Tributes began to pour in for Mr McCain as soon as the news of his death was announced.
Former President George W Bush described Mr McCain as "a patriot of the highest order", adding: "He was a public servant in the finest traditions of our country. And to me, he was a friend whom I'll deeply miss."
Sarah Palin, who was Mr McCain's running mate during his 2008 bid for president, said the world had lost "an American original", sharing a picture of herself with the man she called her friend.
Donald Trump, whom Mr McCain has strongly criticised, tweeted his "deepest sympathies" to Mr McCain's family but made no comment about his life.
Sources quoted by US media said President Trump would not be invited to the funeral and the current administration would probably be represented by Vice President Mike Pence.
Tributes were also paid from the other side of the political spectrum.
Barack Obama, the Democrat who beat Mr McCain to the presidency, said despite their differences, they shared "a fidelity to something higher - the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed.
"Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did," Mr Obama said. "But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own.
"At John's best, he showed us what that means."
Barack Obama, who ran against Mr McCain in 2008, was among the first to pay tribute
Former vice-president, long-time friend and political opponent Joe Biden said Mr McCain's "impact on America hasn't ended".
"John McCain's life is proof that some truths are timeless," he said in a statement. "Character. Courage. Integrity.
"A life lived embodying those truths casts a long, long shadow. John McCain will cast a long shadow."
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