Samuel Wurzelbacher, the man better known to America as Joe The Plumber, is backing away from the man who made him the C-list celebrity he is today, Sen. John McCain. In an interview with Pennsylvania public radio reporter Scott Detrow over the weekend, Wurzelbacher lashed out at McCain, who turned Wurzelbacher into the mascot of his 2008 presidential campaign.
“I don’t owe him shit,” Wurzelbacher told the Detrow. “He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”
Wurzelbacher also told Detrow he’s no longer a fan of Sarah Palin because she’s endorsing McCain’s reelection bid in Arizona. Wurzelbacher, who’s become an ardent support of the tea party movement and went to Pennsylvania to endorse a conservative Republican’s gubernatorial bid, told a crowd of conservatives he was upset with McCain because he’s “a career politician.”
(Speaking of careers and politics, as Christina reported last month, Wurzelbacher charges a fee to campaigns for public endorsements like the one he made in Pennsylvania.)
“McCain was trying to use me,” Wurzelbacher told Detrow after the appearance. “I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”
Despite his new feelings about the man that got him the moderate fame he now enjoys, Wurzelbacher said in the interview that “it’s his duty to take advantage of the platform he’s been given.”
