'John McCain kept reciting names of dictators during Trump's inauguration'

Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar has said that late US Senator John McCain "kept reciting" the names of dictators to her during President Donald Trump's inauguration speech in January 2017, according to a media report. Klobuchar said during a campaign event in Iowa that, McCain, who died at the age of 81 of a brain tumour last year, knew Trump more than anyone did.

McCain, who was the Senator from Arizona was a prisoner of war in Vietnam and a two-time contender for the presidency. Trump and McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, were frequently at odds over the former's approach to campaigning and eventually, his performance as President.

"John McCain kept reciting to me names of dictators during that speech," CNN quoted the Minnesota Senator as saying on Saturday. "Because he knew more than any of what we were facing as a nation, he understood it... He knew because he knew this man more than any of us did," she said.

In 2015, Trump attacked McCain, who had been held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, as "not a war hero" and again criticised McCain after he died of in August 2018. "I was never a fan of John McCain and I will never be," Trump said earlier this year.

In one of his final public statements in July 2018, McCain blasted Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "tragic mistake". On Saturday, Klobuchar, who has previously touted her relationship with McCain while on the campaign trail, said an "arch of justice" started after Trump's "dark inauguration", CNN reported.

"The path that we are on did not just start today. It didn't just start with the 2020 debates," she said. "The arch that we are on, this arch of justice started that day after that dark inauguration."