The other day, Kari Lake did something unusual for a Republican of the MAGA persuasion: She apologized. Lake, who is running for a Senate seat, said she was sorry for antagonizing supporters of John McCain when she called the late senator a “loser” and told “McCain Republicans” to “get the hell out” at a campaign stop during her failed gubernatorial run in 2022.
“It was said in jest,” Lake told a local Phoenix talk-news channel. “And I think that if John McCain, who had a great sense of humor, would have heard it, he would have laughed.”
In response, McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain did something that is the opposite of unusual: She defended her father. “Kari Lake is trying to walk back her continued attacks on my Dad (& family) and all of his loyal supporters after telling them to ‘get the hell out,’” the former co-host of The View wrote on X. “Guess she realized she can’t become a Senator without us.”
Limited polls on the race for the Senate seat, currently held by Kyrsten Sinema and previously held by McCain, don’t necessarily support Meghan’s claim that Lake needs her backing to win in November. But on Wednesday, the candidate tried to clear the air anyway. In a long post on X directed at Meghan, Lake wrote that her father also passed away from cancer and that she wished to make both her and her father proud as a senator. “I value you,” Lake wrote. “I value your family and I value the passion you have for our state.”
McCain was succinct in her reply:
Well, it was worth a shot.
