Steve Schmidt, a former campaign adviser to John McCain, unleashed a torrent of tweets about Meghan McCain on Saturday, saying that her father was “appalled and embarrassed” by her conduct on the campaign trail, which Schmidt described as “the most rotten, entitled, spoiled, cruel, mean and bullying behavior I have ever witnessed.”
The trouble began after the Washington Examiner reported that McCain’s memoir “Bad Republican” had only sold 244 copies since its April release. Schmidt reacted to the news by remembering the time he kicked McCain off of a plane during the 2008 John McCain due to her “outrageous behavior.”
McCain appeared to retaliate by liking a reply that accused Schmidt of “running a pedo racket” during the Trump presidency.
“.@MeghanMcCain has been trying to have a conversation with me for almost 14 years,” Schmidt wrote on Saturday afternoon. “Once again, today, she called me a Pedophile. It is a slander. It is disgusting. It is untrue and it says everything about her. Here she is liking the tweet of a far right liar and piece of filth.”
He added that “After 14 years of abuse and attacks, today is the day I have decided to respond.”
What followed was an 11-part Twitter series recounting McCain’s behavior throughout the 2008 campaign. Many of the tweets characterized her as a “raging, screaming, crying” baby, despite her being in her mid-twenties at the time.
“The tantrums were beyond anything I have ever witnessed from any other human being,” Schmidt wrote. “They were epic meltdowns that would test the range of Meryl Streep, Kate Winslett, Jodi Foster and Anne Hathaway on their best days. Raging, screaming, crying, at the staff, at the makeup people at Secret Service.”
As Schmidt tells it, he was “the first adult” who ever said “no” to McCain, and he took it upon himself to discipline her.
“It was my job to confront it and I did,” he continued. “I talked to 24 year old @MeghanMcCain the way an adult should have talked to the Trump kids. I talked to her the way a retired USMC 4 Star General failed to do in the WH with Ivanka, Jared and Jr.,” he said, adding that “they are all the same people.”
When Schmidt told her “that she was unimportant and that everything around her had nothing to do with her,” and that “she was privileged and lucky and should be grateful,” McCain doubled down.
“She told me and anyone else who would listen in response, ‘Do you know who the F– my Dad is,’” Schmidt recalled. “It was the miserable anthem of the total chaos that was the McCain Campaign. It never stopped until one day when I said ENOUGH!”
In a blistering final statement, he framed McCain as an “unaccomplished, spoiled” disgrace to her family’s legacy.
“She has rejected her Family’s history of service for a shallow and purposeless celebrity where she trades on a famous name like a fourth generation wannabe clipping coupons while pretending to be an heir,” he said.
But Schmidt wasn’t done yet. He then pivoted to addressing John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin for his running mate: “The entire VP process, like everything else, was a mismanaged clusterfuck.”
“I have taken the heat for 14 years over this stupidity,” he added, lambasting McCain’s decision as “idiotic, reckless and historic.”
“@MeghanMcCain Do you want to know who picked Palin? If you were to answer in typical fashion, the answer would be, ‘My Father.’”
In reply to another user, he fully let loose on Palin, calling her “an absolutely degenerate liar” among other descriptors.
“She’s a quitter and a buffoon who has no business ever holding a position of public trust, ever,” he declared. “Not even as a crossing guard.”
McCain, a former co-host on “The View” and Daily Mail columnist, did not respond to Schmidt directly. She shared multiple tweets disputing that “Bad Republican” was a commercial failure, writing that the physical book was intended as a “collectible” for fans of the previously released audiobook version.
