Trump says he didn’t know about efforts to hide Navy ship named for McCain

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Thursday he knew nothing about White House efforts to hide a Navy destroyer named in part after the late Sen. John McCain during Trump’s state visit to Japan earlier this week. But, he said, whoever made the request was “well meaning” because the person or people knew Trump did not like McCain.

The request was an effort to keep McCain’s name out of photographs while Trump was in Yokosuka. And two Navy sailors who worked on the ship said they were turned away from Trump’s speech on another ship, the amphibious assault ship Wasp.

“Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, OK?” Trump said Thursday. “They were well-meaning, I will say. I didn’t know anything about it. I would never have done that.”

Navy officials said they did not hide the ship, which was named for the senator’s father and grandfather. Sen. McCain’s name was added to the official namesake last summer.

Trump also criticized McCain on Thursday for having delivered a critical vote against the president’s health care proposal in July 2017 and said McCain carried “a lot” of responsibility for former President George W. Bush’s decision “to go into the Middle East, which was a catastrophe.”

“So I wasn’t a fan of John McCain, I never will be,” Trump said. “But certainly I couldn’t care less whether or not there’s a boat named after his father.”

Trump regularly lashed out at McCain while he was alive and has remained critical of him since he died last year from brain cancer. He dismissed McCain’s service in Vietnam, when he was held as a war prisoner, saying he was not a hero.

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

“It’s beyond petty — it’s disgraceful and the White House...