John McCain Claps Back At Donald Trump's Congress Subtweet And We're Cheering

Because we are being cosmically punished, you can't be well-versed in the American political landscape without obsessively refreshing Twitter all day, every day. And today is no different. After President Donald Trump blamed Congress for poor relations with Russia in a tweet on Aug. 3, Senator John McCain came back at him. "You can thank Putin," McCain's tweet reads.

No @ing. No addressing Trump by name. Just a good old American subtweet from an 80-year-old politician to a fellow 71-year-old politician.

A little context: on Aug. 2, President Donald Trump begrudgingly signed a bill imposing sanctions on Russia and limiting his own power. While he released a statement questioning the constitutionality of such a bill and, for some reason, bringing up health care, his reaction was relatively subdued. (As was the fanfare around the bill: he signed behind closed doors, a very un-Trump-like move.)

But that didn't mean he didn't have something inflammatory to say. He instead took to Twitter to blame Congress for the negative relations between the U.S. and Russia -- inferring that the sanctions bill would only make matters worse.

That's right: in the middle of an investigation into the extent to which Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, he attributed the U.S.'s "all-time & very dangerous low" relationship with Russia to Congress. Our Congress. The entire legislative branch of the government.

And his tweet -- again, throwing an entire branch of the U.S. government under the bus and seemingly prioritizing Russia over an entire branch of the U.S. government -- didn't sit well with Senator John McCain.

So McCain cited Russian hostilities with U.S. allies (including attempted interference in the French election), their attempted U.S. election hacking, and, you know, invading neighboring countries like Ukraine.

It's worth noting that McCain's subtweet is not the first time he has been critical of the Trump administration. (He even scored a cover story in New York Magazine in February for criticizing the president.)

In May, he compared the growing scandals surrounding the current administration to Watergate, according to Business Insider. "We've seen this movie before. It's reaching Watergate size and scale," McCain said. "This is not good for the country."

That said, according to FiveThirtyEight, he votes with Trump about 85 percent of the time, so his ~savage~ tweet should arguably be taken with a grain of salt.

But perhaps his anti-Trump talk is starting to sink in. If you look at his voting record compared to Trump's position, he has voted against the president in 6 of the last 9 instances.

So perhaps he really is once again becoming the "maverick" for which he was so beloved for so many years.