Bridget McCain isn’t one to clamor for the spotlight, but this week, the “very, very private” youngest daughter of the late Arizona Sen.John McCainspoke out in a very public way to rebuke PresidentDonald Trumpfor his continued disparagement of her dad.
“Bridget, for the first time ever, has decided she wanted to speak out,” Meghan said on Thursday’s episode.
“She felt inclined to say and tweet this,” Meghan said, referring toBridget’s two tweets at President Trumpon Thursday morning in which she asked him “to be decent and respectful.”
In a second tweet, Bridget went on the offensive, casting the president’s fixation on her father as part of his broader narcissism and poor impulse control.
“Even if you were invited to my dad’s funeral, you would have only wanted to be there for the credit and not for any condolences,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, you could not be counted on to be courteous, as you are a child in the most important role the world knows.”
OnThe View, Meghan said Bridget’s stand was “very brave. She’s very young and she does not speak publicly.”
She “shares John’s very dry sense of humor,” mom Cindy McCaintoldHarper’s Bazaarin 2007.
“She’s the toughest of the four,” Sen. McCain told dadmag.com in 2000. “The youngest always has to be the toughest.”
Here’s what you need to know about Bridget.
From left: Sen. John McCain with daughters Meghan and Bridget.Meghan McCain/Instagram
Her Incredible Journey Home
TheNew York Timescalled the McCains “a large, close-knit brood” ina 2007 profile; the following year, ina PEOPLE cover story, the family was described as a “big, bustling, blended clan.”
The oldest McCain children are Doug and Andy, whom Sen. McCain adopted when he married his first wife Carol, with whom he had daughter, Sidney. McCain and his second wife, Cindy, had three more children — Meghan, Jimmy and Jack — before Cindy took what would prove to be a life-changing trip to a Bangladeshi orphanage in 1991.
“One had a heart problem the other a severe cleft palate. Cindy was very concerned about their ability to survive and their need for medical treatment, so she decided to bring them here for medical treatment,” Sen. McCain told dadmag.com in 2000. “She fell in love with both of them. We decided to adopt Bridget. Two close friends of ours, adopted Mickey, the other child.”
In a speech in 2008, Cindy remembered meeting Bridget this way,according to theNew Yorker: “She was sick and tiny and she was only 10 weeks old. And I got to know her a little bit, and I was with her for quite a while.”
Flying back to the U.S., Cindy said she “realized that this child had chosen me and I could not give her up.”
But, Cindy told her 2008 audience, “What you don’t know about this story is I didn’t tell my husband.”
The family embraced her, and her siblings grew very protective, especially sister Meghan, according to the 2008 PEOPLE story.
“She has enriched our lives,” Sen. McCain said in 2000. “She’s a wonderful child, a complete part of our family and we love her.”
Speaking withHarper’s Bazaarin 2008, Cindy said Bridget’s siblings “saw no difference; they never did.” Her husband and Bridget bonded quickly.
“He not only took it in stride [Bridget’s surprise return with Cindy from Bangladesh] but loved it, immediately embracing Bridget, who shares John’s very dry sense of humor,” Cindy said. “So she and her dad do pretty well together.”
On the Campaign Trail
Bridget was still a pre-teen when her dad launched his first presidential bid, in 2000, but her age did not shield her from the ugliness of politics.
Such tactics — clearly engineered to resonate with the South’s worst racial history — stunned the campaign. As a top aide at the timetoldVanity Fair, “The child thing. … I’ve seen the worst form of racist sons of bitches in the world in David Duke, but this was unbelievable.”
McCain withdrew from the race not long after losing in South Carolina and elsewhere. Cindy did not let the world forget what had been done to their family and she cried at her husband’s defeat.
But: “Losing is not what bothered me,” she said afterward,according to theTimes. “It was how we lost. When they criticized me for having an adopted child of color, that capped it. That was despicable.”
Bridget herself knew nothing of it for several more years. And then she Googled herself.
“Over the years, I was always afraid that someone at school would say something, but they didn’t,” Cindy toldHarper’s Bazaar. “It just never clicked that she’d look herself up on the Internet. She was so upset, took it so personally. John and I tried to make Bridget understand that people who say things like that are very wrong; it’s not what we — nor most people — are about.”
“Fortunately,” Cindy continued, “she’s an awfully strong girl.”
Bridget McCain at the Republican National Convention in 2008.Jae C Hong/AP/REX/Shutterstock
Cindy McCain (left) with daughter Bridget.Jae C. Hong/AP
Accordingto theTimes, Bridget made the discovery of the 2000 smear campaign in 2006, and she spoke up when her father was weighing whether to run again in 2008.
In 2007, Bridget, who was then 16, “summoned Mr. McCain’s aides and asked them to explain in detail what had happened in South Carolina and to give assurances that it would not happen again,” theTimesreported.
As Cindy remembered it toHarper’s Bazaar: “When the family gathered to decide if we were going to run, she asked the campaign managers such specific, good questions, I thought, Whoa, okay!”
“She [Bridget] was a very important part of the process in deciding if we were going to run,” Cindy told theTimesin 2007. “She wanted to know the whole history of it.”
Bridget made occasional public appearances as her father successfully campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination and went on to challengeBarack Obama.
The McCain family at the 2008 Republican National Convention.Alex Wong/Getty
Then a sophomore at a Phoenix private school, she appeared with the rest of her family at the Republican National Convention and gave a brief interview toScholastic News. In contrast to the 2000 contest, when she traveled for the campaign, Bridget said she stayed at home for most of her dad’s 2008 run.
“My dad’s best achievement is being a dad and also running for president at the same time,” she said. “He always puts family first!”
Bridget sat for a PEOPLE cover shoot with her family in 2008 but was not quoted. As theTimesnoted in 2007, her parents declined to let her be interviewed.
But she made her presence felt in other ways. As PEOPLE reported then:
Her Life Now
Bridget enrolled at Arizona State University in 2010 and,according to theArizona Republic, had an interest in special education, a subject her mother taught.
Meghan helped Bridget pack for school,per theTimes, and gave her some sisterly advice: “I told her, ‘Do not put anything on Facebook you wouldn’t want pasted on every gossip blog everywhere.'”
In contrast to some of her siblings — most notably Meghan, who has built a national media career — Bridget has largely avoided public attention as an adult.
In two joint interviews in 2017to mark Meghan’s wedding, Sen. McCain and Cindy reflected on the success of their kids.
McCain said then that Bridget was finishing school. (“She’s kind of on the six-year plan,” Cindy noted. “That’s okay though, I’ve been told that’s common, so I’m not worried.")
After her father passed away last summer from brain cancer, a visibly emotional Bridget gave a short Bible reading at his funeral in Phoenix.
“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to give birth, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant,” she said, quoting Ecclesiastes.
The McCain family at an event in Arizona in November 2010.
This week, Bridget spoke up again about her father with her tweets at President Trump.
On Instagram, Meghan wrote that she was “incredibly proud” of her younger sister.
“I love you more than I could ever possibly say,” she wrote alongside a photo of her, Bridget and their dad. “Your strength and grace continues to help carry us all through our grief.”
In their PEOPLE interviews in 2017, Bridget’s parents spoke lovingly of her and all their children.
“We have Meghan in the media. We have Jack McCain in the Navy. We have Jimmy McCain in the Army Guard. And Renee [Jimmy’s wife] in the Air Force,” Sen. McCain said then. “And we are very proud of our daughter Bridget, who is the joy of our life. So we are truly blessed.”
source: people.com
