President Trump took a thinly veiled swipe at cancer-stricken Sen. John McCain on Friday during a speech at an annual gathering of conservatives — without mentioning him by name.
Trump, touting his tax reform bill that also killed the ObamaCare individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance, lamented that the Affordable Health Care Act would have been repealed in its entirety if the 81-year-old Arizona Republican had not voted against repeal.
“We’re having tremendous plans coming out now, health care plans, at a fraction of the cost that are much better than ObamaCare. And except for one senator, who came into a room at 3 in the morning, and [voted] like that, we would have had health care too,” the president said to loud cheers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.
“We would have had health care too. Think of that. People are getting great health care plans and we’re not finished yet. But, remember, one person walked into a room, when he was supposed to go this way, and he said he was going this way, and he walked in and he went [the other] way and everyone said, what happened? What was that all about?,” he continued.
“Boy, oh, boy, who was that? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to be controversial so I won’t use his name, okay? What a mess.”
Trump stunned Democrats and Republicans alike when he slimed McCain on the campaign trail in July 2015 for getting captured in Vietnam.
“He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” then-candidate Trump said.
Just two weeks ago, McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, said she thought the president would lay off her father, who is under treatment for terminal brain cancer.
“I don’t believe he would go there again,” she told Politico about Trump.
“I don’t think at this point in his administration it would be beneficial to him in any way.”