NO, YOU

Ultimate Republican Nepo Baby Slams Trump’s Dynasty Pick Disaster

It takes one to know one—and Meghan McCain isn’t pretending otherwise.

One of the GOP’s most famous nepo babies blasted another political heir for cashing in on her family name as Republicans reeled from an election-night bloodbath.

Meghan McCain, the daughter of longtime senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain, leveled an ironic criticism at Donald Trump-picked South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham, who lost her bid for a full term to Democrat Annie Andrews on Tuesday.

“Regardless of who wins tonight Darline Graham never had any business running for Senate,” McCain wrote about an hour before Andrews was declared the winner of South Carolina’s Senate race. “Nepo baby isn’t something that’s popular anywhere, let alone nepo sister.”

Graham, like McCain, has a famous political surname. She is the younger sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, and assumed his seat in the Senate after his death in July.

Trump, a longtime friend of Lindsey, threw his support behind Graham within a month of her brother’s death. The endorsement drew criticism from GOP officials, particularly after Graham admitted during a debate that she was “not informed on national security,” and that the subject was not her “area of expertise.”

Still, Trump defended Graham, calling her “honest” for admitting what she didn’t know. The president continued championing the Graham family name, despite objections from within his own party.

“I think they say pride goeth before the fall, and we’re seeing that all across the country,” Graham’s primary opponent, Ralph Norman, told The New York Times on Tuesday. “You can’t force a person on South Carolina... that’s pretty evident now.”

McCain launched her media career during her father’s 2008 presidential campaign, chronicling life on the campaign trail through her “McCain Blogette.” She became a columnist at the Daily Beast in 2009, and later contributed to MSNBC and Fox News. She served as a co-host of The View from 2017 to 2021 and later wrote for the Daily Mail.

Graham wasn’t the only Republican in McCain’s crosshairs. She had plenty to say about the party’s election-night performance, too.

“Candidate quality matters. Candidate quality will always matter,” she wrote.

When a commenter called her criticism “awkward,” McCain leaned into the irony, replying, “As a nepo baby I’m an expert on all nepo baby matters, thank you.”

Play Video

McCain also wasn’t shy about putting the GOP’s losses into historical perspective, calling it the “worst election for a party since 1974.”

The 1974 midterms came in the wake of the Watergate scandal and President Gerald Ford’s controversial pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon.

McCain has had a long-running feud with Trump dating back to 2015, when the then-presidential candidate mocked her father, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down over Hanoi. Trump infamously declared that John McCain was “not a war hero,” adding, “I like people who weren’t captured.”

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Christopher Buchanan

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.