John McCain reveals that picking Sarah Palin as a running mate in his presidential race was a mistake

ARIZONA Republican Senator John McCain said on Saturday that he’s sorry he chose then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the presidential race he lost to Barack Obama in 2008.

Mr McCain, who is 81 and battling brain cancer, told the New York Times that if he could do it over he would have picked former Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Lieberman told The Times that he hadn’t known McCain felt that way. “It touched me greatly,” he said.

According to the New York Post, Palin started out strong as the first female candidate for vice president. But she soon became a controversial figure. In one case, she denounced as “ridiculous” talk of the Republican National Committee’s $150,000 spending spree on clothing and accessories for the Palin family. “Those clothes, they are not my property,” she insisted.

“Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the RNC purchased, I’m not taking them with me,” she said.

MCCAIN DOESN’T WANT TRUMP AT HIS FUNERAL

Senator McCain has revealed that he loathes US President Donald Trump so much that he plans to diss him from beyond the grave.

The ailing Arizona Republican, who has brain cancer, is organising his funeral – and close associates have told the White House that Mr Trump will not be invited.

Instead, Vice President Mike Pence, who served with McCain in Congress, will be asked to attend the service, the New York Times reported Saturday. The ceremony will be held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

A stream of politicians, including former Vice President Joe Biden and former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, have been visiting Mr McCain at his Arizona ranch and a nearby hospital in recent weeks.

Mr Trump’s long-running feud with Mr McCain has roots in the early days of the 2016 presidential race. The senator criticised Mr Trump for disparaging Mexican immigrants in the June 2015 speech in which he declared his candidacy.

Three weeks later, Mr Trump called Mr McCain “incompetent” and dismissed his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

“He’s not a war hero,” Mr Trump told an Iowa crowd. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

This article first appeared in the New York Post and is republished with permission.