Trump: ‘I Was Never a Fan of John McCain and I Never Will Be’

President Trump on Tuesday continued his long-running public campaign against the late Senator John McCain, telling reporters during a pool spray in the Oval Office that he was “never a fan of” the Arizona lawmaker due to his decisive vote against the Republican-led effort to repeal Obamacare.

Trump, who has lashed out at McCain on Twitter in recent days, was asked by a reporter why he continued to malign McCain months after the senator’s death from brain cancer in August of last year.

“I’m very unhappy that he didn’t repeal and replace Obamacare, as you know. He campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years and then it got to a vote and he said thumbs down,” Trump responded. “Our country would have saved a trillion dollars and we would have had great health care. . . . I think that’s disgraceful. Plus there are other things. I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.”

The remarks come after McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, posted a Toronto Star cartoon on social media on Monday, which depicted her father’s military decorations next to an array of pacifiers ostensibly representing Trump’s accomplishments. Former Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson responded with an edited version of the cartoon highlighting Trump’s electoral victory and McCain’s failure.

Trump repeatedly attacked McCain on Twitter over the weekend, falsely claiming that the naval pilot and prisoner of war graduated “last in his class” at Annapolis, before attacking his decision to pass the unverified Steele dossier to the FBI.

Meghan McCain utilized her platform as a co-host on ABC’s The View to respond to Trump’s provocations.

“He spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he knows it, I know it, and all of you know it: He will never be a great man,” she said during Monday’s episode. “My father was his kryptonite in life and he was kryptonite in death. On a personal level, all of us have love and families and when my father was alive until adulthood we would spend our time fishing, cooking, really celebrating life and I think it’s because he almost died.”

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