Tom Tancredo Describes Being Screamed At By John Sidney McCain III

His loathing for McCain has a long history. “I don’t like him,” Tancredo said. “He is not a very pleasant person. He is nasty, mean; the skin of an onion would look deep compared to his. He has a short fuse, he is almost peculiarly unstable.”

He still remembers his first encounter with the senator from Arizona. In 1999, Tancredo was elected to the House with 54 percent of the votes in his Colorado district. “When you win with less than 55 percent of the vote, you are seen as vulnerable. So then the party will go out to the superstars and say, can you please pick one or two vulnerables and do a fundraiser for them.” Somebody in McCain’s office picked him. “And I go, that’s great!” Tancredo recalled.

One day, he went over to the Senate and bumped into McCain in the elevator. “I had never met him. So I shake his hand to thank him for doing the fundraiser.” The senator then asked if he could count on Tancredo’s support for McCain-Feingold (a bipartisan campaign reform act McCain had drafted with Democratic senator Russell Feingold). Tancredo opposed this proposed regulation of political campaign financing, and he told McCain. “So I go: ‘I am voting no, I don’t like it. I actually think it’s terrible’.”

“It was like a bomb went off in his head. He exploded! He was screaming at me! It was, ‘When I come across the fucking street, you are…’ And, ‘You don’t know what the fuck you are talking about!’ And I said, ‘What?!’ I was just so taken aback. But then I went after him: ‘Hey, nobody told me you are coming to help me for a quid pro quo for a shit bill!’ It just got worse. It was really bad, I remember us getting out of the elevator and people stepped back way up because they couldn’t handle the screaming.”

The two never reconciled. “From there, it only went downhill,’’ according to Tancredo.

So what you are saying is, he would have been a really bad president?

“A terrible president.’’

Fine judge of character, Mr T. And very smart, w/ evolving definitions & everything.

What makes him [You know who.] a socialist?

“Well, first of all, the definition of socialism is constantly evolving it seems. And given today’s definition, I guess I should have used the word ‘euro socialism’. European type socialists think that big government is acceptable. You don’t own the means of production but you tax the hell out of them for the purpose of redistribution of wealth. That’s closer to his position than the textbook definition in which the government own the means of production.’’

So it’s not necessarily true that he is socialist?

“No. But the ends are the same. You have a flattening income curve and redistribution of wealth mostly based on taxation. He has talked about that. He likes that idea. He talks about the people that have influenced him, and some of them are committed Marxists. So he thinks that way, he works with people who think like that, and he really has no qualms about the government taking over General Motors. I mean, the government saying who can be the chairman of GM? I do not understand that anybody can look at that and say, ‘No that’s not socialism’.’’

Blah blah blah. And blah. Your 15 mins. are up, Tommy.