Fast a meal and donate to campaign, says Senator McSally, faces backlash

Senator Martha McSally’s comment during a campaign in Arizona has invited the wrath of social media and has sparked a new controversy. In a statement dismissed as a “joke” by her campaign, McSally had asked her supporters to skip a meal and donate to her re-election campaign.

“We’re doing our part to catch up, you know, to get our message out. But it takes resources. So, anybody can give, I’m not ashamed to ask, to invest. If you can give $1, $5, if you can fast a meal and give what that would be,” McSally had said in a recent event at northern Arizona.

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The remark was slammed by social media users, causing the senator’s name to trend on Twitter with nearly 30,000 tweets. Singer-songwriter and writer Holly Figueroa O’Reilly called McSally’s remarks “sick.”

“There are literally people sitting in their cars in food bank lines all night in order to get a small box of food to feed their entire families for one week,” she wrote. Dean Obeidallah, a comedian and radio show host, called it “selfishness that defines Trumpism.”

Meanwhile, in a response to the local media, the McSally campaign spokesperson said that the Democrats are trying to character assassinate the Senator. They called the attempts disgusting and said that she “would literally give the shirt off her back for anyone.”

McSally will be facing Democratic opponent Mark Kelly in the November elections.