A 2008 video of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) defending his then-campaign opponent Barack Obama went viral after McCain’s death on Saturday.
The resurfaced clip from the campaign trail shows McCain shutting down a supporter who pushed a racist conspiracy theory against Obama, who was then a Democratic senator from Illinois.
“I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, um, he’s an Arab,” a woman said to McCain at a town hall meeting in Lakeville, Minn., in October 2008.{mosads}
McCain then grabbed the microphone and cut the woman off.
“No, ma’m,” he said. “He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that just I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what the campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”
McCain’s response was met by boos from the crowd, according to a Politico report from the time.
The Republican giant died Saturday at the age of 81 after a battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer.
The clip began circulating again on the internet, following the news of McCain’s death.
Author Stephen King said the instance was McCain’s “finest moment.”
“That’s manning up,” he said in a tweet.
Singer-songwriter Bill Madden praised McCain for standing up “in a packed auditorium full of Republican bigots” and defending Obama.
He also took a dig at President Trump.
“Something Trump would’ve NEVER had the human decency to do,” Madden added.
Pakistani-Canadian author Ali Rizvi said the clip showed that McCain was “once a hero, always a hero.”
The longtime political leader and Vietnam War veteran died one day after his family announced that he would be discontinuing medical treatment for brain cancer, stating that the “progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age” had rendered “their verdict.”
McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma in July 2017.
He survived years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam before becoming a decades-long leading actor on the political stage.