Meghan McCain on her dad, U.S. Sen. John McCain: 'I’m scared of America without him'

In a new wide-ranging magazine interview, Meghan McCain offered details of her relationship with her father, U.S. Sen. John McCain, and how she has coped in the year since his brain cancer diagnosis.

McCain, a political commentator and co-host of ABC’s “The View,” has used her perch to take on President Donald Trump for his repeated attacks on her father, as well his policies and rhetoric.

She told Glamour magazine the devastating diagnosis has caused her to approach life as her father did: unafraid.

“My father is the sun in my universe,” McCain, 33, told the magazine. “He’s the absolute center.”

She travels back and forth from New York to Cornville, where the six-term senator has remained since December. She plans on returning later this month, after celebrating her honeymoon with conservative pundit Ben Domenech. 

Last month marked one year since the senator’s diagnosis of glioblastoma, an aggressive and typically lethal form of brain cancer.

McCain, 81, and those closest to him have not publicly revealed his long-term medical prognosis.

The median survival time for glioblastoma patients who have surgery and standard treatment is 15 to 16 months.

He has acknowledged his doctors gave him a "very poor prognosis" and that, in addition to getting treatment, he has been trying to "celebrate, with gratitude, a life well-lived."

His daughter cannot imagine a world without him, she told Glamour.

“He’s the last person who needs to be sick now because I so need him here, fighting for all the things that we believe in,” she says. “I’m scared of America without him.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime friend of the McCain family, consoles her and checks in on her frequently, Meghan told the magazine. Biden lost his son, Beau, to glioblastoma.

In the interview, Meghan reflected on her dad’s hospitalization in April, when he had surgery for an intestinal infection related to diverticulitis.

If there were things she wanted to tell her dad, his medical team said, they needed to be said then. 

“We’ve done that," she told Glamour, reflecting on that moment. "He knows I love him more than anything, and I know he loves me more than anything. There’s nothing else. What's next?"

Memories of her childhood flashed through her mind, she recalled to Glamour.

Her dad had always been strict with her, just as he was with her brothers. Why, she asked herself, had he not gone easier on her? 

“I realize now he did it so I could survive this," she said.

Follow the reporter on Twitter @yvonnewingett and Facebook. Email her: yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com.

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