Lies you tell: Police refute Cindy McCain's claim that she stopped human trafficking incident
Article By Jakarta Shareef // Sex Trafficking // EEW Magazine
Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain, has been caught in a damaging lie.
Phoenix Police refuted her false claims that she had witnessed, and put a stop to, an awful human trafficking incident at Sky Harbor International Airport last week.
Originally, during a call-in interview with KTAR News 92.3 FM, 67-year-old McCain said, “I came in from a trip I’d been on and I spotted — it looked odd — it was a woman of a different ethnicity than the child, this little toddler she had, and something didn’t click with me.”
McCain said, “I went over to the police and told them what I saw and they went over and questioned her and, by God, she was trafficking that kid.”
The hosts were shocked.
“No way!” one said.
“And you said a toddler?” the other asked.
“Yes,” McCain said. “A toddler. It was a toddler. She was waiting for the guy who brought the child to get off the airplane.”
McCain used her grossly exaggerated example of what happened to encourage listeners to follow the Department of Homeland Security’s motto: If you see something, say something.
But here’s the problem: neither was she saw nor said were true.
Phoenix Police Sgt. Armando Carbajal told KTAR that they had, in fact, conducted a welfare check on a child at the airport Thursday at McCain’s request. During the call, however, “officers determined there was no evidence of criminal conduct or child endangerment,” he said.
So then, why did McCain make up such a fanciful story—one that could encourage bigots to go after loving families that may not all have the same ethnicity?
No one is sure why, particularly because she has failed to explain the bizarre story, though she did say this on Twitter:
At Phoenix Sky Harbor, I reported an incident that I thought was trafficking. I commend the police officers for their diligence. I apologize if anything else I have said on this matter distracts from “if you see something, say something.”
Stranger still, Mrs. McCain, of all people, should not have found it odd for a mother to be a different ethnicity than a child in light of the fact that she and her late husband took in a Bangladeshi orphan, Bridget McCain, in 1991. Mrs. McCain first discovered the child among 160 abandoned babies at a center run by the late Mother Teresa in Dhaka.
Sadly, that interracial adoption was later weaponized during Sen. McCain’s presidential run against George W. Bush in 2000. A phone poll organized by Bush allies asked South Carolina voters, "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"
The suggestion alone was enough to derail his campaign. It never recovered.
The blatant hypocrisy of Mrs. McCain accusing a mom of trafficking her child simply because their skin color didn’t match is undeniable.