[Defense News] WASHINGTON ‐ Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain on Tuesday painted a dire picture of his relationship with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, saying it’s worse than it was with Obama-era Defense Secretary Ash Carter."I had a better working relationship, back and forth, with Ash Carter than I do with an old friend of 20 years," McCain said, referring to Mattis. He added that he has considered both Mattis and McMaster "friends of mine for many years."
As McCain has waged a public battle with cancer, his penchant for asserting the Senate’s powers to check and balance the executive branch has only grown. On Tuesday, McCain implied national security officials have seen his committee as a rubber stamp, and he is using his seat’s powerful levers to conduct oversight.
"I think they had this idea, once that Trump won, that we are a unicameral government," said McCain, R-Arizona, "and we have to do what we have to do."
The Carter comparison says something, as Obama was McCain’s frequent foil. In Obama’s final year in office, McCain jousted with Carter and the administration over the defense budget, his reform efforts and his slow-rolling of DoD nominees. At one point, McCain vented over a frayed relationship between Congress and the Pentagon’s civilian leadership when Carter denied McCain a courtesy preview of the 2017 Pentagon budget.
It has appeared there might be a thaw in the senator’s relationship with the Pentagon. McCain said he was receiving information from Mattis about his strategy for Afghanistan and the Islamic State fight‐and that he would not block a handful of Pentagon nominees from Senate floor votes.
On the other hand, McCain was in a war of words with the commander in chief. While accepting the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia Monday night, McCain warned the United States against turning toward "half-baked, spurious nationalism" ‐ widely read as a repudiation of Trump.
Trump responded in a radio interview Tuesday, "I’m being very, very nice. But at some point I fight back, and it won’t be pretty."
