Butler: … make an inference by getting inside the guy's head; you know from deep seated motivations.
Definitely it was true of Bush because he talked, you know, he led everybody to believe, he told us he was angry because of what had happened to his father and he was going to get even. So I think it would be a giant leap to try...
Kall: Fair enough.
Butler: at least to me it would, I don't know that….
Kall: Fair enough. So, you also say John is not a religious person but he's taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy Fundamentalist ministers, so your knowing him during the years as a student and in the prison, he was not religious?
Butler: John came from an elite Navy lineage, and an elite Navy lineage back in the day of the 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s was usually a member of the Episcopalian, quite often frequently a member of the Episcopalian protestant religion.
Kall: Like George Herbert Walker Bush, I think.
Butler: Yeah, exactly; that's the one; you got it. Right. So that's what John was and we had a Naval Academy Chapel and back in those dark days of the 1950s, every midshipman was required to attend the church service of their choice on Sunday morning, but you had to attend one, and of course that's not true now because that's illegal; it's unconstitutional to force people to go to church, but back in those days they did. And so John and I and a whole bunch of other midshipmen who were apathetic just fell into a church party service and marched off to the Chapel every Sunday and endured the 45 or 50 minute nationalistic ceremony with the flag coming down the middle of the aisle and the "Onward Christian Soldiers" kind of songs, the Navy songs, and all that stuff, we endured it for an hour and then we came back, and we couldn't have cared about it one way or the other, but just recently, John has, I don't know if he's fully joined, but he is attending I know, and purports to have joined, a Baptist Church, and that can mean only one thing to me and that is just one more instance of the "Crooked Talk Express" selling out to get votes from the Religious Right.
Kall: Did he ever get in trouble, I mean he broke all these rules; did he ever get in trouble with anything having to do with attending the services or anything like that?
Butler: I wouldn't doubt but what he did, it's just been so long ago, I can't remember exactly what he did other than he amused us by doing things all the time.
Kall: Ok. Another thing you write is,
"I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he dislikes that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander; so in these and many other instances, I don't se that John is the straight talk express he markets himself to be" and you just said, it's the "Lie Express." How did you call it?
Butler: It's the "Crooked Talk Express".
Kall: Crooked talk Express, Yeah.
Butler: The guy changes—lately, and I think this is a more recent phenomenon; I think when the guy was first in the Senate, that he did kind of vote his conscience and go along, though I think he still tested the wind and did things that he would get some notoriety for, but nevertheless, in recent years, he has done everything he can, and I just know—you can just see the body language and you just know that he can't stand George W. Bush, and for him to do that after the things that Bush and his group to him in that election was—just made me sick to watch that, just pure politics in action.
Kall: So to kind of wrap up here now, knowing John McCain as you know him so well from the time you've spent with him both as a student and as a prisoner of war, how would you see him operating as President that scares you or concerns you? What would be some of the ways that he would function, and in a way that we wouldn't want to see him as President, if he became President?
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