Getty Trump: McCain 'doesn't know how to win anymore'

President Donald Trump revived his feud with John McCain on Thursday, tweeting that the Arizona senator “doesn't know how to win anymore” and shouldn’t have called a U.S. raid in Yemen a failure.

“Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! He's been losing so long he doesn't know how to win anymore,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets Thursday morning. “Just look at the mess our country is in - bogged down in conflict all over the place. Our hero Ryan died on a winning mission ( according to General Mattis), not a 'failure.' Time for the U.S. to get smart and start winning again!”


Trump’s tweet continued a broadside against McCain that began when the White House on Jan. 29 called the raid in Yemen a “success.” The raid led to the death of Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens. McCain, in turn, called it a “failure” but later softened his language to say it was not “a success.”

The back-and-forth continued this week, with White House press secretary Sean Spicer criticizing McCain for undermining the "success" of the raid and calling on the decorated war hero and former prisoner of war to apologize. McCain instead sent out a statement describing a Vietnam-era mission to save POWs, including himself, and called out Spicer by name.

Later Thursday morning, McCain's press secretary Julie Tarallo released a statement saying, “Senator McCain will continue to execute his oversight duties as chairman of the Armed Services Committee and support the brave men and women serving our nation in uniform.”

There appears to be no love lost between McCain and Trump. Early in Trump’s campaign to be president, he criticized the Arizona Republican.

“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

