President Trump said Wednesday that he never got a “thank you” for allowing the late Sen. John McCain to have the lavish funeral he wanted, as the president continued his feud with the McCain family.
“I endorsed him at his request and I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve,” Mr. Trump said during a visit to Ohio. “I didn’t get [a] thank-you — that’s OK. We sent him on the way. But I wasn’t a fan of John McCain. “
Mr. Trump went on to say that he thought he’d put the matter behind him, but the press continues to ask him about McCain, with whom he’d often been at odds.
“Not my kind of guy, but some people like him, and I think that’s great,” Mr. Trump said.
McCain died in August, sparking a week of mourning and ceremonies for the former Navy pilot, long-time senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee.
The president, after renewing his animosity for McCain last weekend in a series of tweets, said he has “certain reasons” for disliking the late lawmaker. Chief among them was McCain’s role in disseminating the Steele Dossier of salacious and unproven allegations against Mr. Trump in late 2016.
“John McCain received a fake and phony dossier,” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “It was paid for by crooked Hillary Clinton. And John McCain got it. And what did he do? He didn’t call me. He turned it over to the FBI, hoping to put me in jeopardy. That’s not the nicest thing to do. I’m a very loyal person.”
Mr. Trump also blamed McCain for getting America involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.
“We’re in a war in the Middle East that McCain pushed so hard,” Mr. Trump said. “He was calling President [George W.] Bush all the time — ’Get into the Middle East, get into the Middle East.’ So now we’re in that war for $7 trillion, thousands and thousands of our people have been killed, millions of people overall, and frankly, we’re straightening it out now but it’s been a disaster for our country. We’ve spent tremendous wealth, and tremendous lives in that war. And what do we have? It’s worse than it was 19 years ago. I call them the endless wars. So John McCain loved it.”
He again bashed McCain for his vote to reject a “skinny repeal” of Obamacare in July 2017.
“John McCain campaigned for years to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Mr. Trump said. “When he finally had a chance to do it, he voted against repeal and replace, at two o’clock in the morning. He went thumbs down, badly hurting the Republican Party, badly hurting our nation, and hurting many sick people who desperately wanted good affordable health care.”
And he said McCain “didn’t get the job done for our great vets and the VA, and they knew it.”
“That’s why when I had my dispute with him, I had such incredible support from the vets and from the military. The vets were on my side.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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