“I frankly think the president’s continued attacks on now-late Sen. John McCain is something that’s regrettable and for which he should apologize,” said Sen. Chris Coons. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Congress Coons: Trump ‘should apologize’ for McCain tweets

Sen. Chris Coons on Sunday called on President Donald Trump to apologize for trashing the late Sen. John McCain on Twitter during the weekend, and supported the departed Arizona Republican’s delivery to the FBI the so-called dossier on Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.

“I’ve long thought that his personal and direct attacks on Sen. McCain” were “one of the most detestable things about President Trump’s conduct as a candidate,” Coons, a Delaware Democrat, told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” in defense of the former GOP senator and 2008 presidential candidate, who died last August after a battle with brain cancer.


“I frankly think the president’s continued attacks on now-late Sen. John McCain is something that’s regrettable and for which he should apologize,” Coons added.

Trump railed against McCain on Saturday for passing along to former FBI Director James Comey an explosive and largely unverified dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The report detailed years of links between Trump and Russia, and insinuated that the Kremlin possessed compromising information on the president.

“Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier ‘is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain,’” Trump wrote online , appearing to quote former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

Trump attacked again on Sunday morning, tweeting : “So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) ‘last in his class’ (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!”

McCain flagged the dossier to law enforcement officials in December 2016 — several weeks after the presidential election. The FBI had launched its probe into Russian election interference five months earlier.

“Sen. McCain conveyed that report out of a sense of duty, and he is someone who lived his entire life with a sense of honor and duty to our country,” Coons said Sunday.

Meghan McCain, the late senator's daughter, reposted the president's tweet on Saturday, writing to Trump: "No one will ever love you the way they loved my father."

She added: "I wish I had been given more Saturday’s with him. Maybe spend yours with your family instead of on twitter obsessing over mine?

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — a McCain protégé and the Arizonan’s closest ally in the Senate at the time of his death, who has since re-oriented himself as one of the president’s staunchest congressional warriors — responded indirectly to Trump’s tweets on Sunday.

“As to @SenJohnMcCain and his devotion to his country: He stepped forward to risk his life for his country, served honorably under difficult circumstances, and was one of the most consequential senators in the history of the body,” Graham wrote online .

“Nothing about his service will ever be changed or diminished,” he added .

Another of McCain’s Senate colleagues, Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), said on Sunday that Trump’s weekend onslaught against McCain represented “just another outrageous action by the president.” She called the former naval aviator a “war hero” who “served our country well,” during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“The fact that the president would be now attacking John McCain for things like turning over a report to the FBI, which was, of course, the right thing to do, for things like serving our country, I cannot even express,” Klobuchar said.