Trump’s retelling of the healthcare vote, usually without mentioning McCain by name, continued throughout the senator’s more than year-long treatment for brain cancer. Trump has also told White House aides that his supporters are not big fans of McCain and boasted that he became president while McCain did not.įor McCain, a life of courage and politics came down to 1 vote » He repeatedly told advisors that McCain should have stepped down from the seat and let the Republican governor appoint another senator. After the vote, Trump said that McCain voted no out of a personal vendetta against him and that he would never vote yes to something that helped Trump. McCain crossed the White House last year over the GOP attempt to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and Trump has never forgiven him. But he also showed frustration toward Trump’s White House, dismissing nominees abruptly from his office or growing angry at senior West Wing aides. In office, McCain supported much of Trump’s economic and national security agenda, despite his misgivings about Trump’s dismissive approach to traditional U.S. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!” Trump’s immediate and angry response: “The very foul mouthed Sen. McCain did eventually endorse Trump in 2016, then withdrew his support weeks before the election after the emergence of an “Access Hollywood” tape where Trump is recorded bragging about groping women. “He would rather protect the Iraqi border than Arizona’s.” “The reality is that John McCain the politician has made America less safe, sent our brave soldiers into wrongheaded foreign adventures, covered up for President Obama with the VA scandal and has spent most of his time in the Senate pushing amnesty,” Trump wrote in an op-ed for USA Today that month. He has occasionally told people that he does not regret the comment. Trump refused to apologize at the time, despite criticism from nearly every corner, and never retracted the statement. I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said during a forum in Ames, Iowa. “He was a war hero because he was captured. Why did Carter and McCain have such different brain tumor outcomes? » The battle was on.īy the end of that month, Trump had disparaged McCain’s Vietnam War service, saying McCain was “not a war hero” despite spending more than five years as a POW and enduring torture. In July 2015, after then-candidate Trump rallied an estimated 15,000 in Phoenix and claimed to represent a “silent majority,” McCain said Trump had “fired up the crazies” in his state. McCain rarely disguised his distaste for Trump as the real estate developer ran for president on a platform that included attacks on immigrants and U.S.