Watch above: Republican Senator John McCain discusses the stability of American politics, the rift inside the Republican party and how North America’s failure to do more in Syria has allowed to conflict to grow.
HALIFAX—He ran for president and is an icon of the Republican party. But Senator John McCain is under attack from within. Here, he speaks about the stability of American politics and the rift inside the Republican party.
“The big struggle I think … in my party is probably going to be one that’s been there ever since the Republican Party—certainly since the beginning of the 20th century—and that is isolationism versus internationalism,” McCain said in an interview on The West Block with Tom Clark.
“When in bad economic times, as we’ve been through, there is a greater, greater impulse to, say, withdraw to America—no foreign aid, we don’t need the military etc. etc. And that has been a debate that’s been going on. It’s going on right now within my party, through all of America.”
McCain also discussed the situation in Syria, where three years of a bloody civil war has created what the UN describes as the most challenging refugee crisis in a generation.
The senator says failure on the parts of Canada and the United States to provide more help for Syrians has contributed to the crisis and allowed the conflict to grow to the point where it’s affecting the entire region.
“We will pay a very, very heavy price for that,” McCain said before telling the story of a recent experience at t refugee camp in Jordan. “At that time there were only 50,000 refugees there. A woman was showing me around, a school teacher, and she said, ‘See all these children Senator McCain?’ I said yes. She said, ‘They’re going to take revenge on those who they believe abandoned them and failed to help them. And I’m telling you my friend we’re going to reap the whirlwind.’”
WATCH BELOW: The full, unedited interview with Republican Senator John McCain.
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