AP FACT CHECK: Trump on McCain; Biden's stretch on virus

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he never called John McCain a loser — he did — and denigrated the record of the late Republican senator on veterans affairs despite routinely appropriating one of McCain’s crowning achievements on that front as his own.

)Trump distorted events in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the past week and his own hand in them before a furor over his reported comments on fallen soldiers diverted his rhetoric.

Democratic rival Joe Biden claimed to have been the first person to have called for the use of emergency production powers in the pandemic, when he was not.

A review:

VETERANS and McCAIN

TRUMP: “I was never a big fan of John McCain, disagreed with him on many things including ridiculous endless wars and the lack of success he had in dealing with the VA and our great Vets.” — part of a series of tweets Thursday.

THE FACTS: He's ignoring McCain's singular successes on behalf of fellow veterans.

McCain was a leading force in the Senate behind the law that gave veterans an option to go outside the Department of Veterans Affairs' health care system and get private care at public expense under certain conditions. President Barack Obama signed the VA Choice legislation into law. Ignoring that reality, Trump persistently claims that he brought Choice into law when no one else could.

Trump signed a law in 2018 that expanded the options for using the Choice program established by Obama, McCain and other lawmakers.

The 2018 law is named after three lawmakers who were veterans of war. All of them now are dead. They are Rep. Samuel R. Johnson, R-Texas, and Democratic Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, D-Hawaii, and McCain, R-Ariz.

___

TRUMP: “Also, I never called John a loser and swear on whatever, or whoever, I was asked to swear on, that I...