with me, particularly in 2008, maeve reston and jonathan martin.were talking about how it's fitting to have this kind of sendoff first here in arizona. arizona was as much john mccain and his essence as washington or the military. >> yeah, i mean, he always said before arizona, he didn't have a home because he had traveled as a navy brat as a child. he said this was the place that enchanted and claimed him. here at his church, the church he began attending with cindy, it was just a really special place to him, and he wanted to honor the state he loved so much. >> and jonathan, the fact that a quarter of senate, democrats and republicans, are traveling here to arizona to be here for this church service says a lot. >> well, john mccain was a man of the senate. he came to washington, first to the house in 1982, but then at his first chance, he came to the senate to replace barry goldwater. >> jonathan, sorry to interrupt. i just want to say we're seeing cindy mccain walking ouz there, getting ready for the motorcade, of course with her children. on on

let's talk more now about this when maeve reston. maeve a cnn u.s. political reporter. joining us this hour. thank you so much for your time. undoubtedly senator mccain cast a big shadow on the u.s. senate, on washington, d.c., and on this nation. tell us more about his life. >> it's really interesting. i got to know him during the 2008 presidential campaign when he was running for the second time. and in those early days in new hampshire in 2007 he literally was riding around on the straight talk express through the snow in new hampshire where he had staked his entire campaign with just a couple of reporters. his -- thought to be the heir apparent earlier on that year and then his campaign completely blew up. he ended up boarding a southwest flight. he put the campaign back in full gear and really had to scratch and he did that just by going from town to town throughout new hampshire. and people were so struck by his frankness, his humor. he was constantly making people laugh throughout his speeches, sometimes telling the same jokes over and over again, but they seem t

. >> and certainly maeve, something we don't see very often now in this town. john, i'm going to go to you on this. i want to play a little bit of your interview you had with senator mccain in 2008. >> why do you think you still, after all this time, have to convince these people i have been with you from the beginning? >> i don't know. maybe i haven't done a good enough job. we're trying to, and we're trying to show them that i am a conservative in every way. i'm a proud conservative, but i'm not embarrassed at all about the fact that i have reached across the aisle to try to get things done for them in washington while preserving those conservative principles. >> john, go ahead. >> think of that in the context of 2008 then close your eyes and fast forward ten years to where we are today. john mccain was considered not a reliable conservative because, as maeve noted, he thought hillary clinton was a show boat, a first lady who wanted to run for president, was stopping by the senate to punch a ticket. then he realized she's doing the work, i respect her. she tr

m maeve reston is with me.ems obsessed with jumping on this and tweeting about it yet again. >> within the last, you know, six or seven minutes he is back to rapid fire tweets attacking governor cuomo for these comments. and it's really interesting because you would expect a politician who's been, you know, in the arena for that long to realize that this is going to come out as a statement because it's so easily captured in that short little phrase. we'll be seeing it in campaign ads for a long time, especially if he runs for president in 2020, which is very possible. but there is a silver lining for him in this in the sense that trump is really taking him on. all yesterday and today he's in a tough reelection battle with cynthia nixon who had her own little tart response to this comment. and the people who are going to be voting for cuomo would like to see him in a fight with trump. in fact, that's something he has tried to play up in his campaign, that he would really take it to donald trump. so in some ways