McCain: Tillerson ‘Divorced a Fundamental of American Democracy’

Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had divorced “a fundamental of American democracy.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at the G20 summit on the civil war in Syria “maybe” Russia has “the right approach,” and the United States has the  “wrong approach.”

Mccain said, “You can’t make that up. You can’t make that up. These are the same people that use precision-graded weapons to strike hospitals in Aleppo where sick and wounded people are. This is just … you know, in preparing myself mentally to be on this show. ‘I said, John, you’re not going to get upset, you’re not going to get emotional,’ but I have met white hats. I know what the slaughter has been like. I know that the Russians knew that Bashar al-Assad was going to use chemical weapons.”

“And to say that maybe we’ve got the wrong approach — look, I agonized over voting for or against Tillerson for secretary of state, not that I didn’t admire his success and all the great things he’s done, but the things that he said in the past, he has divorced a fundamental of American democracy,” he continued. “The reason why we are the shining city on the hill, as Ronald Reagan used to say, is because they look up to us because of our principles and our beliefs and our advocacy of freedom. That’s what America is supposed to be all about, not whether they’re right and we’re wrong. We know who is right and who is wrong here.”

When asked if he regrets voting for Tillerson, McCain added, “Sometimes I do.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN