LISTEN: Audio Released From John McCain’s Upcoming Book, ‘Maybe I’ll Be Gone Before You Read This’
Sen John McCain (R—AZ) released a heart-wrenching audio excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, The Restless Wave, which recounts his tenure in political office and paints a picture of the nation as he envisioned it.
The senator, who is currently battling a deadly and rare brain cancer, begins the spoken-word excerpt provided to NPR on Thursday by saying, “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here.”
“Maybe I’ll be gone before you hear this. My predicament is — well — rather unpredictable,” he continues. “I want to talk to my fellow Americans a little more, if I may: my fellow Americans, no association ever mattered more to me. We’re not always right; we’re impetuous and impatient, and rushing to things without knowing what we’re really doing…but our country ’tis of thee. What great good we’ve done in the world.”
McCain’s historic and decades-long career in the public eye may finally be coming to a close, as the senator writes in his new book with longtime collaborator Mark Salter. In his latest project, the war veteran and twice-presidential candidate describes some of his most historic feats in office, while defending some of his most controversial decisions.
Meanwhile, the “maverick” (as he’s come to have been known in Washington) hasn’t stopped going rogue in his possible final years on Capitol Hill; McCain caused an uproar in the Republican Party last year when he essentially shot down President Donald Trump’s health care alternative to former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
In The Restless Wave, McCain also appears to decry his party’s moving further away from the center and its newfound affinity for far-right conspiracy theories under Trump.
“Before I leave I’d like to see our politics return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history from the history of other nations,” he continued in the audio excerpt. Later in his memoir, NPR notes that the senator also slams those who use the web “to spread conspiracy theories and calumnies about candidates to people with an appetite for that sort of thing or an inability to discern what could be true from something spawned in the fever dreams of people who should probably seek psychiatric help.”
Listen to an audio excerpt from McCain’s forthcoming book via NPR here.
[image via screengrab]
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