Cindy McCain talks about Hunter Biden, sacrifices and Meghan in new interview

Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), discussed her own battle with opioid addiction while criticizing the treatment of President Biden’s son Hunter in a new podcast Tuesday.

“This is not to be political and I don’t mean it to be, but in the case of Hunter Biden, whether you like him or not, whether you agree with him or not, I don’t care. But the fact of the matter, they have once again shamed a man who is struggling in addiction, and the media has taken no sense of responsibility about helping him deal with this,” McCain said in an interview on theSkimm’s podcast “Skimm’d From The Couch,” released Tuesday evening. 

“Instead, they’ve made sure that he’s a laughing stock of America, and I just find that wrong,” she continued.

McCain added that addiction is a “common thread that runs through our country,” and until it is treated as a national health crisis, “we’re never going to get a handle on it.”

McCain writes about her own experience with opioid addiction in her book, “Stronger: Courage, Hope, and Humor In My Life With John McCain,” which was released Tuesday.

According to NPR, McCain said her addiction began after her husband was a focus of the 1990s Congressional investigation of the “Keating Five” savings and loan scandal.

McCain said the worst thing people can do to an addict is shame, humiliate and make fun of them, which is “exactly what they did to me.”

McCain made these remarks in a wide-ranging interview on theSkimm’s weekly podcast, taped Thursday, where in addition to Hunter Biden and addiction, she discussed sacrifices related to her family’s roles in public life, and her daughter Meghan McCain, a co-host on ABC’s “The View.”

When asked about the greatest sacrifice she made as a political spouse, Cindy McCain said she never viewed her situation as a sacrifice, instead calling it a “deployment.”

“See, I never viewed it as a sacrifice,” McCain said. “We lived in Arizona full-time and my husband stayed in Washington, came home every weekend. So it was not a sacrifice. We viewed it as a family as a deployment, that he was deployed to Washington, D.C., and that’s how I explained [it] to my kids.”

She told her kids their father was “serving his country.”

McCain said her daughter is “John McCain in a dress.”

“We realized that early on. She gained all of the things that John was so good at, not just the confidence but the strength and the standing up for what’s right, and just her vision of the world,” McCain said.

“I wanted a strong daughter and I got it. I certainly did with her. She’s amazing,” McCain added.

McCain made headlines earlier this month when reports surfaced that President Biden was preparing to appoint her to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations World Food Program.

If chosen for the post, McCain will be Biden’s first Republican appointee to a Senate-confirmed position.

Last week, McCain shot down the idea of launching her own political bid, saying she prefers to “sit back and watch others do it.”

Updated April 28, 11:53 a.m.