White House Trump intensifies attacks on McCain: 'I never was a fan of John McCain, and I never will be'

President Donald Trump on Tuesday ratcheted up his attacks on the late Sen. John McCain, again lashing out at the former lawmaker for his dramatic thumbs-down vote to repeal Obamacare in 2017.

“I never was a fan of John McCain, and I never will be,” Trump told reporters while sitting next to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in the Oval Office.


Trump accused McCain, who died of cancer in August, of changing his vote on the health care law at the last minute without notice. More than a year and a half after McCain cast his legendary vote on the Senate floor, Trump said the move made him "very unhappy."

“Our country would have saved a trillion dollars, and we would have had great health care,” Trump said Tuesday.

The president claimed McCain had campaigned on the promise of replacing Obamacare and still chose to thwart Republican efforts in 2017, a move Trump on Tuesday called "disgraceful."

Trump’s comments come days after the president railed against McCain on Twitter, noting that he passed along to former FBI Director James Comey an explosive and largely unverified dossier compiled by an ex-British intelligence officer alleging links between Trump and Russia.

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Trump also mocked McCain on Twitter for being "last in his class" at the U.S. Naval Academy. The former Navy pilot graduated from the military academy in 1958, finishing near, but not at, the bottom of his class.

Though the Obamacare vote was the peak of the pair's feud, clashes between Trump and McCain date back to the beginning of the former's presidential campaign, fed by a variety of personal and policy disagreements. Trump stirred intense controversy on the campaign trail in July 2015 when he knocked McCain by saying, “He’s not a war hero,” and that, "I like people who weren’t captured.”

McCain spent roughly five-and-half years in a notorious North Vietnamese prison, where he was repeatedly tortured.

Trump was not invited to McCain's funeral last year, and the American flag atop the White House was initially raised to full-staff in the wake of the senator's death — and was returned to half-staff in McCain's honor only after the move garnered criticism from both sides of the aisle.

Trump's tweets over the weekend drew fire from "The View" host Meghan McCain, the late senator's daughter, who accused the president of "obsessing" over her father and his political rivals.