John McCain on Trump-Comey scandal: 'Watergate took many months and this thing seems to be taking hours'

Senator John McCain says that the ongoing scandal surrounding Donald Trump isn’t comparable to Watergate — it is developing much too fast for that.

“It’s just another scandal, it’s just another scandal that unfortunately continues,” Mr McCain told reporters when asked if he sees any similarities with the political scandal that led the the resignation of Richard Nixon. “Watergate took many months, and this thing seems to be taking hours.”

The senior senator from Arizona is known for his relative independence and willingness to stand up on issues of importance to him. He has recently been increasingly critical of the Trump administration following news reports alleging that the President had casually given Russians highly classified intelligence during an Oval Office visit and that he had allegedly pressured former FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation into a member of his staff.

“We’ve seen this movie before. It’s reaching Watergate size and scale,” Mr McCain said previously at a dinner for the International Republican Institute. “This is not good for the country.”

Those scandals have rocked the White House recently, and has further alienated Republicans in Congress who already appeared to be having a difficult time working in sync with the Trump administration to move legislation.

Republicans in both the House and the Senate have indicated that they want to see memos reportedly written by Mr Comey that describe conversations with Mr Trump in which the President asked him to let go of investigations into former National Security Director Michael Flynn’s interactions with Russian officials. Mr Flynn was forced to step down form his post in February after it was revealed that he had misrepresented a conversation he had with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican, said that he would like the FBI to send over all records of communications between Mr Trump and Mr Comey — including those memos — within a week. He would be willing to subpoena the documents as well, he has said.