Former GOP presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain says that Donald Trump's rally in Phoenix over the weekend could hurt him politically, especially his push for comprehensive immigration reform.
"It's very bad," McCain, who is up for re-election in 2016, told
The New Yorker. "This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me. Because what he did was, he fired up the crazies."
McCain has been pushing for comprehensive immigration reform for a while, in a fight that has put him at odds with the more conservative members of the party.
"We have a very extreme element within our Republican Party. We did to some degree regain control of the party," he said.
However, he is now afraid that Trump's ability to fire up the conservative base on the immigration issue will prove a setback for those pushing for comprehensive immigration reform.
"Now he galvanized them," McCain told The New Yorker. "He's really got them activated."
While Trump is rising in the national polls and is in the
top spot of the of USA Today/Suffolk University poll to win the GOP presidential nomination, the party's 2008 candidate says that Republicans have yet to learn about the real estate mogul's more liberal positions.
"He was a big Democratic supporter,” McCain told The New Yorker. "Some of this stuff is going to come out: he gave more money to Democrats than Republicans; he had Hillary Clinton at his wedding. You know, he’s attacking Hillary Clinton after she was in the front row of his — I don’t know which wedding it was."
That being said, McCain thinks a Trump candidacy may remain popular among some in the GOP.
"We'll see how this plays out, but there is some anger in my state," he said. In a reference to the thousands of illegal immigrant children who came across the border last summer from Central America, McCain acknowledged that "people who otherwise might be more centrist are angry about this border situation."
McCain is a strong supporter of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who he said has taken a strong stance against the statements made by Trump on immigration. However, Graham is not gaining a lot of traction in the polls so far.
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