HBO’s documentary on the 2008 Republican nominee John McCain does a sterling job of covering the Senator’s life and career, paying as much attention to his mistakes as his successes.
But there’s one person that “John McCain: For Whom The Bell Tolls” completely omits, even though McCain has been embroiled in a dispute with him for the last few years. Of course, that man is none other than the 45th President Of The United States Donald Trump.
McCain and Trump have been at odds over a variety of different political topics. Unfortunately, Trump has often made these quarrels very personal, making a number of insulting and disparaging comments that have left a very sour taste. It is one of just a myriad of reasons why the political sphere has become so toxic.
I recently had the chance to speak to one of “John McCain: For Whom The Bell Tolls’s” filmmakers, Teddy Kunhardt, who worked on it with his brother George and father Peter, during which time he admitted that it was a very conscious choice, by both them and McCain, to keep Trump out of the documentary. Kunhardt even explained why.
“I think it was important for him and for us to show our generation that it wasn’t that long ago that Republicans and Democrats and Independents could work together to get things done. And unless we go back to that we are not going to move forward.”
“One question that keeps coming up is, ‘Why didn’t you include Trump in this film?’ We made a decision not to include Trump in this film because this is a message for the senate, for congress, that they have to start working across party lines and put country first. We didn’t want the noise of the Trump moment to distract from that message.”
“John McCain: For Whom The Bell Tolls” will air on Monday on HBO at 8pm EST.
