I doubt that it was intentional and I doubt that the Republicans were happy with it, but Sen. John McCain’s questions to former FBI Director James Comey were the most puzzling of the day.
McCain, the final lawmaker to question the former FBI chief, seemed to conflate the federal investigation of Russian election interference with the Hillary Clinton email probe.
The veteran lawmaker then appeared to suggest the FBI was guilty of a double standard, effectively clearing the former Democratic nominee for her use of a private server while keeping the heat on President Donald Trump and his campaign associates for their possible ties to Russia.
“In the case of Hillary Clinton, you made the statement that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to bring a suit against her, although it had been very careless in their behavior, but you did reach a conclusion, in that case that it was not necessary to further pursue her, yet at the same time in the case of Mr. Comey you said that there was not enough information to make a conclusion,” McCain said, confusing Comey for the president.
McCain later asked, “You’re going to have to help me out here. In other words, we’re complete, the investigation of anything that former secretary Clinton had to do with the campaign is over and we don’t have to worry about it anymore?”
“I’m a little confused,” Comey replied.
I am loathe to diagnose from a distance, and I am hesitant to label anyone as suffering from dementia. If they are, then it’s not something you mock them for; it’s a debilitating disease for both the patient and the family. So I’m not going there with why Sen. McCain was confused and lit up Twitter. But even if he’s not perfectly healthy, he still had no reason to make it sound like Hillary Clinton got off easy.
I thought he was having a stroke. I experienced a friend having a stroke about 10 yrs. ago, and it looked a whole lot like John McCain yesterday.
You may caution against long-distance diagnosis and of course you’re right in principle. But the fact is that moment of speech spaghetti from McCain has been tweeted and retweeted and laughed at over and over. He may excuse his lapse has having stayed up too long watching baseball, but I doubt he’ll live it down. I noted he sat alone at the table on the right. No other Senator cared to sit by him. Already he’s being more or less shunned as though what he has is catching. A sorry way to end a great career.