Trump's attacks on McCain exacerbate tensions with Senate GOP

President Trump’s disparaging attack on the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is upsetting Senate Republicans who see the repeated insults on a former war hero and pillar of the Senate as unnecessary and corrosive.

Trump has lashed out at McCain four times in the last five days, most recently at an event in Ohio on Wednesday where he spent a full five minutes on the senator — at one point even evoking the senator’s state funeral.

“I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve,” Trump told workers, who went silent during the remarks, at a tank factory in Lima. “I don’t care about this, I didn't get a thank you. That's OK.”

Several Republican senators have spoken out against the president’s remarks, which come days after the Senate rebuked the president by overturning his emergency declaration to build a wall on the Mexican border.

That vote, which led to Trump’s first veto as president, underscored the brewing tensions between Trump and GOP senators, which are being exacerbated by the president’s insults of McCain.

The strongest pushback against Trump’s putdowns of McCain came Wednesday when Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), usually a soft-spoken senator, chastised Trump for his behavior.

Isakson, the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, urged the president to show more respect to combat veterans such as McCain.

“It’s deplorable what he said,” Isakson said in a radio interview with Bill Nigut of “Political Rewind.”

“It will be deplorable seven months from now if he says it again,” he added.

“We don’t talk about our veterans in any way but to brag on them for the service they render,” he added.