He always tells the media exactly what they want to hear.

Via The Hill:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Thursday that President Obama won the budget battle, and predicts the government won’t shut down again.

“The president won. I give him credit, he won,” McCain said on CNN’s “New Day” program. “But he should have negotiated earlier and we could have prevented some of this pain.”

The senior senator—whom Obama defeated in the 2008 presidential election—said he predicted the outcome of this battle because of the shutdowns he witnessed in the 1990s. McCain is confident, he said, that it won’t happen again.

“We’re not going to shut down the government again. I guarantee it,” he said. “We’re not going to go through this shutdown again because people are too traumatized by it.”

Early Thursday morning, President Obama signed a bill Congress had just passed to lift the debt ceiling and reopen the government after being closed for 16 days.