After his shocking statement against the entire Republican Party last month, when he applauded the release of the CIA torture report to the general public, John McCain's "scum" comment may have put him a step back, after he insulted protesters outside a Senate hearing.
Known for his commitment to pro-war policies and for the fact that he was a famous Vietnam prisoner of war himself, John McCain's "scum" comment might not have caught the world by surprise, but it definitely casts a shadow on the senior United States Senator from Arizona, as he defended controversial former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
According to Reuters, the now-infamous John McCain "scum" comment came last Thursday, as the 2008 Republican Party presidential candidate chaired a special Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing where Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State from 1969 to 1975 (under the governments of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford), was speaking.
As The Guardian reports, the full John McCain "scum" comment featured the senior Senator calling protesters outside "low-life scum," as he told them to "shut up" and advised that, if they didn't stop with their antics, he'd have them all arrested.
In a move that Time Magazine calls channeling "his inner Clint Eastwood," McCain called the protesters who broke into the hearing "disgraceful" when they demanded the arrest of Henry Kissinger for a series of supposed war crimes, attempting to make a citizen's arrest on the German-born politician for different crimes, among them complicity in the bombings during the Vietnam war (in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos), the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and the overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in Chile back on September 11, 1973.
"I've been a member of this committee for many years, and I have never seen anything as disgraceful, and outrageous, and despicable as the last demonstration that just took place," McCain said later on, when the protesters had been escorted out without any arrests. "From all of my colleagues, I'd like to apologize for allowing such disgraceful behavior towards a man who served his country with the greatest distinction. I apologize profusely."
Many news outlets have made fun of John McCain's "scum" comments due to their inappropriateness.
