Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainCOVID response shows a way forward on private gun sale checks Trump pulls into must-win Arizona trailing in polls Nonprofit 9/11 Day bashes Trump for airing political ads on Sept. 11 anniversary MORE (R-Ariz.) dismissed the idea that there are any comparison between President Trump Donald John TrumpTrump says he doesn't think he could've done more to stop virus spread Conservative activist Lauren Witzke wins GOP Senate primary in Delaware Trump defends claim coronavirus will disappear, citing 'herd mentality' MORE and former President Reagan.

In an interview with David Axelrod for his CNN podcast “The Axe Files” that aired on the network on Saturday night, the former Obama adviser asked if McCain saw Trump as a “Reagan-like figure.”

“No, I don’t,” McCain answered.

"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, referring to Reagan’s 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall.

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McCain was also recalling Trump’s February interview in which he seemed to be equating Russian President Vladimir Putin's tactics to the US.

“There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?" he said at the time.

“He spoke out for the captive nations, he spoke out for the people who were behind the Iron Curtain," McCain said about Reagan. "And after the Iron Curtain fell, there were thousands who said ‘I heard Ronald Reagan, I listened to the Voice of America, I listened to Radio Free Europe — he gave us hope.'

“That’s a pretty big difference.”

Ronald Reagan’s son Michael Reagan has previously commented that he believes his father would not be fond of Trump.

In July 2016, speaking about the then presumptive Republican nominee, Reagan said the 40th president "would be confused by Donald Trump and the way he's running the campaign.”

"I don't think he'd be appreciative of the demeaning style of Donald Trump — the way he's treated the other candidates — because my father knew that at the end of the day he had to bring everyone together to win an election."