Former President Trump returned to his criticism of former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who died in 2018, poking fun at the longtime lawmaker’s funeral in a new book, saying “much like his wars, it never ended.”
“I never warmed to him, never felt good about anybody having anything to do with John McCain and never will, even despite the fact that at their request, I gave him the world’s longest funeral, 11 days,” Trump wrote in his new $95 book “Letters to Trump,” excerpts of which were published by the New York Post.
Trump very publicly clashed with McCain in the run-up to the 2016 election. Then-candidate Trump’s most infamous jab at McCain, a former Navy officer who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was when he made fun of the senator’s image as a war hero.
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said at an event in Iowa in 2015. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
The two also had an acrimonious relationship once Trump took office, with Trump regularly assailing McCain over his vote against Republican efforts to repeal ObamaCare.
When McCain died of cancer in 2018, he received funeral and memorial services that lasted five days, not the 11 that Trump claimed in his new book. The memorial services included lying in state at the Arizona Capitol and the U.S. Capitol and burial in Annapolis, Md.
McCain had said before he passed away that he did not want Trump at his funeral.
Former President Obama, future President Biden and then-Vice President Mike Pence all attended the funeral, with Obama and Biden both speaking at services for McCain.
The new book, released this week, includes letters to Trump from the likes of King Charles and President Nixon. A signed copy can be purchased for $399.