Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), ripped a proposal by President Donald Trump to erect a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to blunt the flow of human trafficking in an interview airing Friday.
“The people that are coming over the border, for the most part, are not trafficked individuals,” McCain told NBC News reporter Cynthia McFadden. “It’s people within our own walls, in our own borders, so a wall is not going to fix this, but education will and awareness will and strengthening our laws will.”
McCain serves on the Arizona governor’s human trafficking council and has worked on initiatives to reform laws on the issue since 2004.
McCain recently apologized after law enforcement disputed her claim that she stopped a human-trafficking attempt at an airport in Glendale, Arizona. She made the false presumption because a woman was accompanying a child of “a different ethnicity.”
In February, President Trump said human traffickers were “going through a border where there’s nobody for miles and miles, and there’s no wall to protect,” adding, “they come into our country and they sell people.”
In her interview with NBC News, McCain also criticized the lack of civility in U.S. politics and said that her late husband would have been saddened by the state of Democrat-Republican relations. “I am quite certain he knows what’s going on,” she said. “I know he’d be so upset over this because of the tenor, the lack of inaction on many members’ parts, specifically on members of Congress,” McCain said. “He would’ve been right in the mix saying we’re going to work together, please let’s not fight. That’s who he was.”
She continued: “Oh, he loved a good fight. Heck, yeah. But it was never personal with him. He and Ted Kennedy used to fight like cats and dogs on the floor. but they were the best of friends. I wish we could go back to that.”
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