Trump says aides tried to hide ship

They ‘thought they were doing me a favor’

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Thursday that “well-meaning” aides tried to shield him from view of a warship named for political foe John McCain during a visit to Japan but that he had nothing to do with the effort.

“Somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, OK?” Trump said at the White House. “And they were well-meaning, I will say . ... I didn’t know anything about it; I would never have done that.”

Trump said aides “thought they were doing me a favor because they know I am not a fan of John McCain.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that officials wanted the USS John S. McCain, a warship named for the Arizona Republican who was often at odds with the president, to be kept “out of The USS John S. McCain is named for the late Arizona senator.

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sight” during Trump’s visit to Japan. That trip included a Trump speech at a nearby ship.

The president spoke while leaving the White House en route to Colorado to deliver the commencement address at the Air Force Academy.

Trump and McCain, who died last year, clashed on issues ranging from health care to Trump’s style.

During his presidential campaign, Trump mocked McCain for having been “captured” during the Vietnam War. During a political forum in 2015, Trump said the man who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war was “not a war hero” and was called that only “because he was captured.”

“I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said.

Even after McCain’s death from cancer in August, Trump continued to speak of his dislike for his critic.

In his remarks Thursday, Trump said he was not a “big fan” of McCain “in any way, shape or form,” but “I would never do a thing like” avoiding the sight of the ship bearing McCain’s name.

In a tweet responding to the Journal story, the late senator’s daughter Meghan described Trump as “a child who will always be deeply threatened” by her father’s greatness.

“There is a lot of criticism of how much I speak about my dad, but nine months since he passed, Trump won’t let him RIP,” Meghan McCain tweeted.