There’s no love lost between Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rand Paul (R-KY).
McCain, a hawk when it comes to foreign policy, has criticized the non-interventionist senator’s 13-hour drone filibuster and dismissed him and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as “wacko birds.” But in a profile of Paul published Monday in the New Yorker, McCain said he could get behind a hypothetical Rand Paul presidency.
“I’ve seen him grow and I’ve seen him mature and I’ve seen him become more centrist,” he told the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza in August. “I know that if he were President or a nominee I could influence him, particularly some of his views and positions on national security. He trusts me particularly on the military side of things, so I could easily work with him. It wouldn’t be a problem.”
Yet when Lizza caught up with McCain again last week, the Arizona Republican didn’t sound like he was buying Paul’s support for military action against the Islamic State.
“He said we have to destroy ISIS, and yet he has not described a strategy in order to achieve that goal,” he said.