Story highlights Sen. John McCain is David Axelrod's latest guest on "The Axe Files"

President Donald Trump is nothing like Ronald Reagan, McCain says

The Axe Files, featuring David Axelrod, is a podcast distributed by CNN and produced at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. The author works for the podcast.

Washington (CNN) Ask Sen. John McCain if he sees a comparison between Presidents Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan and the veteran Republican answers without hesitation.

"No, I don't," he told David Axelrod on "The Axe Files," a podcast from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.

McCain said he found "appalling" Trump's assertion in an interview earlier this year that the US lacked the moral standing to question Russian President Vladimir Putin's human rights abuses. " We've got a lot of killers. What do you think, our country's so innocent?" Trump said at the time.

"To state that there's some moral equivalency between an imperfect nation -- that's the United States of America -- and Vladimir Putin is appalling," McCain responded.

"And I think it's pretty clear that there's a difference between, well, aren't we killers and the guy that stood there and said, 'Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall,'" he said, recalling Reagan's historic challenge to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev delivered in a 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall.

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