President Trump took aim at late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Twitter on Saturday for his vote against the GOP Senate majority during the Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare in 2017.
McCain, who died last year, was the third Republican to vote against the bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, former President Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment, in 2017.
{mosads}The tweet appeared to refer to the unverified dossier of Trump’s ties to Russia, authored by a former British intelligence agent and reportedly provided to BuzzFeed by McCain’s office.
“Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier ‘is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain,'” Trump said, apparently quoting former independent counsel Ken Starr, who headed the investigation into the Clinton administration.
“He had far worse ‘stains’ than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!” the president continued.
The tweet is Trump’s second shot at McCain in recent months. He reportedly told a group of news anchors during an off-the-record meeting in February that the late Arizona Republican’s book in which McCain was critical of Trump “bombed.”
McCain was a frequent critic of Trump and rescinded his endorsement during the 2016 general election following lewd comments Trump made on an “Access Hollywood” video that resurfaced late in the campaign.
His decision to vote “no” on a “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act was credited with killing the last Republican attempt to repeal the law, as McCain’s eleventh-hour defection sealed the GOP’s defeat in the Senate.
The senator wrote in his 2018 book, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations,” that he stood by his decision to hand over the dossier of claims about Trump’s relationship with Russia to the FBI. An associate of McCain’s also supplied the document to several news outlets.
The dossier was revealed to have been funded by lawyers for the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and some of the claims remain unverified.
“I discharged that obligation, and I would do it again. Anyone who doesn’t like it can go to hell,” McCain wrote in the book.
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