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US Senator McCain Dies at 81 After Battling Cancer

Washington:(August 26, 2018) Republican US Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who ran unsuccessfully for president as a self-styled maverick Republican in 2008 and became a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, died on Saturday, his office said. He was 81.

McCain, a US senator from Arizona for over three decades, had been battling glioblastoma — an aggressive brain cancer, discovered by his doctors in July 2017 — and had not been at the US Capitol in 2018. He also had surgery for an intestinal infection in April of this year.

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A statement from his office said: “Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 PM on August 25, 2018. With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years.”

No further details were immediately provided.

His family had announced on Friday that McCain was discontinuing further cancer treatment.

His wife, Cindy McCain, wrote: “My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years.

“He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in [the] place he loved best.”

His daughter, Meghan, simply wrote: “I love you forever – my beloved father.”

Alternatively affable and cantankerous, McCain had been in the public eye since the 1960s, when as a naval aviator he was shot down during the Vietnam War and tortured by his North Vietnamese communist captors during 5-1/2 years as a prisoner.

He was edged out by George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 but became his party’s White House candidate eight years later. After gambling on political neophyte Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, McCain lost in 2008 to Democrat Barack Obama, who became the first black US president.

McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a frequent critic as well as a target of his fellow Republican, Trump, who was elected president in November 2016.McCain denounced Trump for among other things his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders the senator described as foreign “tyrants.”

“Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity,” McCain said of Trump in his memoir, The Restless Wave, which was released in May.

McCain in July had castigated Trump for his summit with Putin, issuing a statement that called their joint news conference in Helsinki “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”He said Trump was “not only unable but unwilling to stand up to Putin.”

Sources close to McCain have said Trump would not be invited to the funeral.

Shortly after McCain’s death was announced, Trump tweeted: My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain.”

McCain, a foreign policy hawk with a traditional Republican view of world affairs, was admired in both parties for championing civility and compromise during an era of acrid partisanship in US politics. But he also had a famous temper and rarely shied away from a fight. He had several with Trump.

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