Washington (CNN) Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar on Saturday told a crowd of voters in Iowa that late Arizona Sen. John McCain "kept reciting" the names of dictators to her during President Donald Trump's inauguration speech in January 2017.

"John McCain kept reciting to me names of dictators during that speech," the Minnesota senator said, "because he knew more than any of us what we were facing as a nation, he understood it."

She continued: "He knew because he knew this man more than any of us did."

In 2015, Trump attacked McCain -- who had been held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam -- as "not a war hero" and again criticized McCain after he died of brain cancer in August 2018.

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