FILE - In this June 3, 2016, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets the audience as he arrives to deliver a speech in Singapore. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 election, died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. less

FILE - In this June 3, 2016, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets the audience as he arrives to deliver a speech in Singapore. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 ... more

President-elect Barack Obama addresses the Bipartisan Dinner honoring Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) at the Hilton Washington in Washington D.C. on Monday, Jan. 19, 2009. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune/TNS)

FILE - In this July 14, 1961, file photo, U.S. Navy Lt. John S. McCain III, left, and his parents, Rear Adm. John S. McCain Jr., right, and Roberta Wright McCain stand in front of a plaque with an image of his grandfather, Adm. John S. McCain, as the Naval Air Station Meridian McCain Field is commissioned and named in honor of Adm. McCain in Meridian, Miss. An aide says that U.S. Sen. John McCain died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (AP Photo/File) less

FILE - In this July 14, 1961, file photo, U.S. Navy Lt. John S. McCain III, left, and his parents, Rear Adm. John S. McCain Jr., right, and Roberta Wright McCain stand in front of a plaque with an image of his ... more

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) arrives with his wife, Cindy, to give his concession speech after it is announced that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) won the presidential election, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008 in Phoenix, Ariz. (Brian Baer/Sacramento Bee/TNS) less

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) arrives with his wife, Cindy, to give his concession speech after it is announced that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) won the presidential election, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008 in Phoenix, ... more

FILE - In this Oct. 18, 2008, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., waves to the crowd at a campaign rally in Woodbridge, Va. Aide says senator, war hero and GOP presidential candidate McCain died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) less

FILE - In this Oct. 18, 2008, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., waves to the crowd at a campaign rally in Woodbridge, Va. Aide says senator, war hero and GOP presidential ... more

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain flashes a thumbs up during a rally at The Crown Center in Fayetteville, N.C., Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008. (Corey Lowenstein/Raleigh News & Observer/TNS)

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2008, file photo, Republican presidential nominee John McCain embraces his mother, Roberta, following his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. Aide says senator, war hero and GOP presidential candidate McCain died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) less

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2008, file photo, Republican presidential nominee John McCain embraces his mother, Roberta, following his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. Aide ... more

U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) greets military veterans at the Romney campaign office in Casselberry, Fla., Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012. McCain stumped for Romney in Florida and had a similar event scheduled for Jacksonville later in the day. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/TNS) less

U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) greets military veterans at the Romney campaign office in Casselberry, Fla., Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012. McCain stumped for Romney in Florida and had a similar event scheduled for ... more

FILE -- In this Nov. 16, 2006, file photo Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., pauses while speaking to the GOPAC Fall Charter Meeting in Washington. McCain's family said in a statement on Aug. 24, 2018, the Arizona senator has chosen to discontinue medical treatment for brain cancer. The 81-year-old McCain has been away from the Capitol since December. McCain's face bears a scar from skin cancer surgery in 2000. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file) less

FILE -- In this Nov. 16, 2006, file photo Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., pauses while speaking to the GOPAC Fall Charter Meeting in Washington. McCain's family said in a statement on Aug. 24, 2018, the Arizona ... more

** FILE ** In this Oct. 11, 2008 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally in Davenport, Iowa, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008. McCain styles himself as a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, eager to be in the arena. If elected, he could be expected to pick certain issues and push them to the limit. Look for him to throw down the gauntlet in a few high-profile battles _ vetoing legislation larded with pork-barrel projects, for example. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File) less

** FILE ** In this Oct. 11, 2008 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally in Davenport, Iowa, Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008. McCain styles himself as a Teddy ... more

FILE - In this Jan. 19, 2008, file photo, Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., uses a cheetah hand puppet to make her husband laugh as they ride the "Straight Talk Express" campaign bus to a polling station in Charleston, S.C., on the day of South Carolina's Republican presidential primary. Arizona Sen. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 election, has died. He was 81. His office says McCain died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He had battled brain cancer. less

FILE - In this Jan. 19, 2008, file photo, Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., uses a cheetah hand puppet to make her husband laugh as they ride the "Straight Talk ... more

FILE - In this June 24, 1992, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., holds up an article from the Washington Times during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs on Capitol Hill in Washington. Arizona Sen. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 election, has died. He was 81. His office says McCain died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He had battled brain cancer. less

FILE - In this June 24, 1992, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., holds up an article from the Washington Times during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs on Capitol Hill in ... more

FILE - In this undated file photo provided by CBS, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander John S. McCain lies injured in North Vietnam. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 election, died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (CBS via AP, File) less

FILE - In this undated file photo provided by CBS, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander John S. McCain lies injured in North Vietnam. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 election, died ... more

FILE - In this June 3, 2016, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets the audience as he arrives to deliver a speech in Singapore. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 election, died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File) less

FILE - In this June 3, 2016, file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., greets the audience as he arrives to deliver a speech in Singapore. McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 ... more

(FILES) In this file photo taken on February 12, 2000 backed by a portrait from his youth, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain addresses his third town hall meeting of the day at the Greer Fire Station in Greer, South Carolina. - US senator John McCain died on Saturday August 25, 2018, at 81 according to his office. (Photo by Tim SLOAN / AFP)TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images less

(FILES) In this file photo taken on February 12, 2000 backed by a portrait from his youth, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain addresses his third town hall meeting of the day at the Greer Fire Station ... more

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2008, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally in Tampa, Fla. Aide says senator, war hero and GOP presidential candidate McCain died Saturday, Aug. 25, 2018. He was 81. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) less

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2008, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks at a rally in Tampa, Fla. Aide says senator, war hero and GOP presidential candidate McCain died ... more

John McCain speaks with loyal followers at the Concord Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Concord, N.H., talking mostly about the war in Iraq and about global terror on July 13, 2007. McCain made his first appearance on the trail since shaking up his presidential campaign by replacing his campaign manager and laying off several staffers. (Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/TNS) less

John McCain speaks with loyal followers at the Concord Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Concord, N.H., talking mostly about the war in Iraq and about global terror on July 13, 2007. McCain made his first ... more

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the death of Sen. John McCain (all times local):

Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, are offering condolences to the family of Arizona Sen. John McCain following the senator's death.

Pence says on Twitter that we "honor his lifetime of service to this nation in our military and in public life." Pence says McCain's family and friends will be in their prayers, adding, "God bless John McCain."

Pence tweeted his condolences after President Donald Trump offered his "deepest sympathies and respect" to McCain's family. Trump has had a strained relationship with the Republican senator since the president questioned whether McCain was a war hero.

McCain died at home Saturday after battling brain cancer for more than a year.

On Saturday night, a black hearse accompanied by multiple Arizona State Police vehicles could be seen driving in procession away from McCain's ranch near Sedona.

The patrol vehicles drove slowly down the gravel roadway with lights flashing. The procession then headed toward Phoenix.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are paying tribute to Sen. John McCain as a "skilled, tough politician" who often set aside partisanship "to do what he thought was best for the country."

The Clintons say in a statement after McCain's death that the Arizona senator "believed that every citizen has a responsibility to make something of the freedoms given by our Constitution."

Bill Clinton says he is grateful to McCain for his leadership in helping the U.S. normalize relations with Vietnam during his presidency. McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years.

McCain served alongside Hillary Clinton in the Senate. The Clintons say McCain was "never afraid to break the mold if it was the right thing to do."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asked Republicans in his home state for a moment of silence to remember Sen. John McCain just before lamenting the practical reality that he "needs more votes" in light of a confirmation fight with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

McConnell announced McCain's death to a few hundred people at the Republican Party of Kentucky's annual Lincoln Dinner on Saturday night in Lexington. He asked for a moment of silence "in memory of his outstanding life."

McConnell noted that McCain's absence from the Senate has shrunk his majority to 50-49. He said the biggest question he has had to face over the last few months is whether anyone had to go to a funeral. He later called McCain a "unique American" who made "every tense moment come out better."

Former President Barack Obama is paying tribute to Arizona Sen. John McCain following the death of his 2008 presidential rival. Obama says despite their differences, they shared a "fidelity to something higher - the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed."

Obama says in a statement that the two political opponents "saw our political battles, even, as a privilege, something noble, an opportunity to serve as stewards of those high ideals at home, and to advance them around the world."

Obama writes that they "saw this country as a place where anything is possible - and citizenship as our patriotic obligation to ensure it forever remains that way."

Former President George W. Bush is calling Arizona Sen. John McCain, his one-time political rival, a "man of deep conviction and a patriot of the highest order."

Bush says in a statement that McCain was a "public servant in the finest traditions of our country" and is calling him a "friend whom I'll deeply miss."

McCain died Saturday at the age of 81 after battling brain cancer for more than a year.

Bush defeated McCain in a hard fought Republican presidential campaign in 2000 and later backed McCain's unsuccessful campaign to succeed him eight years later.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has released a statement calling Sen. John McCain a "giant," an "icon" and an "American hero."

McCain was elected to the U.S. Senate from Arizona six times.

Ducey says McCain was an American who will never be forgotten, and he was proud to call him a fellow Arizonan. The Republican governor says McCain's "spirit, service and fierce independence shaped the state with which he became synonymous."

Ducey recalled that the senator always fought for what he thought was right, even when it wasn't popular. He says McCain's "dogged patriotism and passion for country" made him an inspiration.

The governor added that he hopes McCain's legacy will continue to inspire Americans to build a future that would make him proud.

President Donald Trump is offering his "deepest sympathies and respect" to the family of Arizona Sen. John McCain following the senator's death.

The president's statement comes after the two Republican leaders maintained a strained relationship since Trump suggested in 2015 the Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war was not a war hero.

Trump says on Twitter, "Our hearts and prayers are with you!"

McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, died Saturday at the age of 81 after battling brain cancer for more than a year.

Trump has frequently criticized McCain for voting against a 2017 plan in the Senate to replace the so-called Obamacare law.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the war hero who became the GOP's standard-bearer in the 2008 election, has died. He was 81.

His office says McCain died Saturday. He had battled brain cancer.

In 1967, his plane was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam. He was severely injured and spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.

He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982 and the Senate in 1986. A conservative on most issues, he pushed for campaign finance reform and the effort to account for those missing in Vietnam.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, then won it in 2008. But he and running mate Sarah Palin lost to Barack Obama.</s>'I was with my father at his end, as he was with me at my beginning.'

Like countless other celebrities, Meghan McCain is remembering her late father, Senator John McCain.

Earlier today, news broke that McCain had lost his long battle with brain cancer at the age of 81. This coming Wednesday would have marked the politician’s 82nd birthday had he lived until then. And as news of his death has spread, many people are remembering John for the remarkable man that he was — including his daughter, Meghan McCain.

Earlier this evening, McCain took to her popular Twitter account to pay tribute to her father. In a lengthy post, Meghan remembered her father not only for what an incredible man he was, but also for what an incredible dad that he was.

“My father, United States Senator John Sidney McCain III, departed this life today. I was with my father at his end, as he was with me at my beginning. In the thirty-three years we shared together, he raised me, taught me, corrected me, comforted me, encouraged me, and supported me in all things.”

“He loved me, and I loved him. He taught me how to live,” The View host wrote. His love and his care, ever present, always unfailing, took me from a girl to a woman — and he showed me what it is to be a man.”

The 33-year-old then went on to say that all that she is is thanks for her beloved father. And since her dad is no longer here, McCain says that she vows to live up to her father’s example, expectations, and love. Among many things, Meghan says that her father was a “great fire who burned bright,” and even though he is gone, his flame will live on in all of his family members.

And though Meghan says that the days without her father will not be the same since he’s gone, she does share that they will be “good” days. She also thanked everyone for their thoughts and prayers for her late father.

“My father is gone, and I miss him as only an adoring daughter can. But in this loss, and in this sorrow, I take comfort in this: John McCain, hero of the republic and to his little girl, wakes today to something more glorious than anything on this earth,” she wrote. “Today the warrior enters his true and eternal life, greeted by those who have gone before him, rising to meet the Author of All Things: ‘The dream is ended: this is the morning.'”

As the Inquisitr shared earlier today, the 2008 presidential candidate died at 4:28 p.m. local time at his home in Arizona. The Senator was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in 2017 and had been receiving treatment on and off since the tumor was first discovered.

It was just yesterday that the McCain family released a statement informing the public that McCain had opted to stop receiving treatments for the tumor. Senator McCain is most well-known for being a war hero after spending five-and-a-half years as a POW when his plane was shot down over Hanoi.</s>John’s father was a decorated submarine commander in World War II. In Washington, the elder Mr. McCain was influential in political affairs as the postwar Navy’s chief information officer and liaison with Congress. Senators, representatives and military brass were often guests at his home. Raised to full admiral, he was the commander of American naval forces in Europe and, from 1968 to 1972, of all American forces in the Pacific, including those in the Vietnam War theater.

(Two Navy destroyers were named McCain, for the senator’s father and grandfather, the first father-and-son full admirals in American naval history.)

Whipsawed by family relocations, young John attended some 20 schools before finally settling into Episcopal High School, an all-white, all-boys boarding school in Alexandria, Va., in the fall of 1951 for his last three years of secondary education. The school, with an all-male faculty and enrollments drawn mostly from upper-crust families of the Old South, required jackets and ties for classes.

But the scion of one of the Navy’s most illustrious families was defiant and unruly. He mocked the dress code by wearing dirty bluejeans. His shoes were held together with tape, and his coat looked like a reject from the Salvation Army. He was cocky and combative, easily provoked and ready to fight anyone. Classmates called him McNasty. Most gave him a wide berth.

“He cultivated the image,” Robert Timberg wrote in a biography, “John McCain: An American Odyssey” (1995). “The Episcopal yearbook pictures him in a trench coat, collar up, cigarette dangling Bogey-style from his lips. That pose, if hardly the impression Episcopal sought to project, at least had a fashionable world-weary style to it.”

John and a few friends often sneaked off campus at night to patronize bars and burlesque houses in Washington. He joined the wrestling team — a 127-pound dynamo, he once pinned an opponent in 37 seconds, a school record — and the junior varsity football team, as a linebacker and offensive guard. His grades were abysmal, except in literature and history, his favorite subjects. He graduated in 1954.

That summer, he followed his father and grandfather into the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. He resisted the discipline. His grades were poor. He stood up to upperclassmen, broke rules and piled up demerits, though never enough to warrant expulsion. But he became a ferocious boxer, a magnet for attractive young women and one of the most popular midshipmen in his class.</s>John McCain, the longtime senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee who refused to leave fellow prisoners of war behind to escape years of torture in Vietnam, and whose maverick streak as Arizona’s senior statesman at times frustrated fellow Republicans and confounded President Donald Trump, has died, his family confirmed in a statement Saturday.

He was 81 and had been diagnosed with brain cancer in July 2017.

McCain had decided to discontinue medical treatment for the glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, his family announced on Aug. 24. He had surpassed expectations for his survival, but "the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict," the statement said.

McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who was in his sixth term representing Arizona, had a reputation for sticking to his convictions even if it meant disagreeing with his fellow Republicans. He was a fierce critic of President Donald Trump, who in turn repeatedly insulted the ailing senator.

McCain's brain tumor was discovered last year after he underwent surgery to remove a blood clot. He recovered quickly from the surgery and in late July entered the Senate to a standing ovation.

On the Senate floor, he said that his service there had been the most important job he had held.

"And I am so grateful to the people of Arizona for the privilege – for the honor – of serving here and the opportunities it gives me to play a small role in the history of the country I love," he said.

In one of his most dramatic final votes, he gave a deciding thumbs-down to the GOP's last attempt to overturn "Obamacare," the health-care law approved under President Barack Obama. The early-morning vote earned McCain praise from Democrats and Trump's fury.

But he stuck with his party on the contentious GOP-backed tax reform bill in December though he was too ill to return to Washington for the final vote.

His disputes with Trump became especially nasty, and his allies had told the White House that the president was not welcome at McCain's funeral. That antipathy was on display in August when the president failed to mention McCain as he signed a defense bill intended to honor the senator.

After his cancer diagnosis, McCain spent a good deal of his time at his Arizona ranch, where he underwent physical therapy and received visitors, including his daughter, "The View" co-host Meghan McCain, and former Vice President Joe Biden, whose son Beau Biden died in 2015 after being diagnosed with the same brain cancer. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and retired Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman were among friends who saw him at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix.

McCain announced in a book excerpt released at the start of May that cancer forced him to acknowledge he would not be running for re-election.

John Sidney McCain III was born on Aug. 29, 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone to John Sidney and Roberta McCain. The son and grandson of Navy admirals and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he served in the U.S. Navy until 1981, when he retired with the rank of captain. He was elected to the House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982 and to the Senate in 1986.

During the Vietnam War, after his Navy bomber was shot down in 1967, he was held as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese for five and a half years. In 1968, after McCain's father had been named the commander of the U.S. forces in the Pacific, he was offered an early release but refused until those who had been at the prison longer than he were let go.

In 2000, he campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination in a bus he called the "Straight Talk Express," to capitalize on his reputation for independence. During the South Carolina primary, he and his family endured perhaps the ugliest incident of the race: a phony poll that was actually designed to spread the false story that he had fathered a black child during an affair. In fact, the McCains' daughter, Bridget, was adopted from an orphanage in Bangladesh. Other rumors pegged McCain as a traitor in Vietnam and his wife, Cindy, as a drug addict. (Cindy McCain has said she became addicted to Vicodin and Percocet in 1989 after back surgery for ruptured disks.)

The campaign of George W. Bush, his opponent and the ultimate winner, denied it was responsible.

McCain was the Republican nominee for president in 2008, running with then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She seemed a popular choice at first, but as time went on, opinions about her turned negative.

At a campaign meeting in Minnesota, McCain famously told a woman who said she could not trust Obama because he was an Arab that the then-Illinois senator was a decent family man and a citizen.

Trump, while campaigning in 2015, belittled McCain by saying he was not a war hero.

"He's a war hero because he was captured," Trump said. "I like people who weren't captured."

Politicians from both parties quickly rallied around McCain.

The week before McCain had said Trump had "fired up the crazies" in the Republican party with his inflammatory talk about illegal immigration from Mexico.

When McCain’s family announced his decision to stop treatment, Meghan McCain thanked everyone for the love and generosity shown to the family over the last year, and wrote, “We could not have made it this far without you — you’ve given strength to carry on.”

Cindy McCain tweeted, "I love my husband with all of my heart. God bless everyone who has cared for my husband along this journey."

John McCain's marriage to his first wife, Carol, ended in divorce.

He is survived by another daughter, Sidney, and sons John Sidney McCain IV, or Jack, and Jimmy McCain. While he was married to Carol McCain, he adopted her two sons from an earlier marriage, Doug and Andy.</s>Arizona Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of North Vietnam for five years who served three decades in Congress and went on to become the Republican Party’s nominee for president in 2008, died Saturday at 81.

In his last hours, McCain turned down further treatment for the brain cancer he had been battling since the diagnosis in July 2017. Doctors discovered the tumor during a medical procedure to remove a blood clot from above his left eye. He remained upbeat after the diagnosis, flying back to Washington days after surgery with a large scar visible above his eye to partake in the Senate’s health-care debate.

“I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support – unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I’ll be back soon, so stand-by!” McCain tweeted upon hearing the diagnosis.

On Friday, his family issued a statement saying, “Last summer, Senator John McCain shared with Americans the news our family already knew: he had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, and the prognosis was serious. In the year since, John has surpassed expectations for his survival. But the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict. They added, “With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment.”

In a memoir published in May, McCain wrote that he hated to leave the world, but had no complaints.

“It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make peace,” McCain wrote. “I’ve lived very well and I’ve been deprived of all comforts. I’ve been as lonely as a person can be and I’ve enjoyed the company of heroes. I’ve suffered the deepest despair and experienced the highest exultation. I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

McCain had not been in Washington since December, leaving a vacuum in the corridors of the Senate and the television news studios he roamed for decades.

In recent months, he was not completely quiet, however, blasting President Donald Trump in a series of tweets and statements that showed that while he was ailing he had lost none of his appetite for the political fight.

The Arizona senator repeatedly made clear that he saw Trump and his America First ideology as a departure from the values and traditions of global leadership that he saw epitomized in the United States.

McCain made it clear he did not want Trump at his funeral. Former rivals and Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush had been asked to give eulogies, according to news reports.

McCain was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father was stationed in the Navy. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1958, McCain went to Vietnam.

In 1967, his A4 Skyhawk was hit by a surface-to-air missile over Hanoi. McCain was captured by the North Vietnamese, who tortured and beat him for more than five years. He was in solitary confinement for several of those years.

“My room was fairly decent-sized – I’d say about 10 by 10,” McCain would later write. “The door was solid. There were no windows. The only ventilation came from two small holes at the top in the ceiling, about 6 inches by 4 inches. The roof was tin, and it got hot as hell in there.”

His captors offered him early release after learning his father was a notable naval officer. But McCain refused to leave before the other prisoners. He was released in 1973.

McCain’s injuries from his imprisonment were visible the rest of his life, most noticeably the restricted movement of his arms.

In 1982, McCain was elected to the House of Representatives. Only a few years later, in 1986, he won the race to replace Arizona’s conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater.

He was implicated in what became known as the Keating Five Scandal in 1989, accused with several other lawmakers of helping the owner of the Lincoln Savings and Loan, who had donated to his campaign.

He was responsible for introducing then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to a national audience by tapping her as his running mate. The McCain-Palin ticket went on to lose the general election to Barack Obama, who became the country’s first black president.

For years, McCain declined to call his choice of Palin a mistake. But in his book, “The Restless Wave,” McCain reportedly writes that he regrets not choosing his friend, then-Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, as his running mate, calling it “another mistake that I made.” Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic nominee for vice president, was an independent who caucused with Democrats.

After the 2008 loss, McCain returned to the Senate, embracing his role as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain is survived by his wife Cindy, seven children and five grandchildren.</s>McCain, with his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, was a fearless and outspoken voice on policy and politics to the end, unswerving in his defence of democratic values and unflinching in his criticism of his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump. He was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times but was twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. John McCain, who faced down his captors in a Vietnam prisoner-of-war camp with jut-jawed defiance and later turned his rebellious streak into a 35-year political career that took him to Congress and the Republican presidential nomination, died Saturday after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.

An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the GOP nomination, only to be overpowered by Democrat Barack Obama. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure.

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defence of the nation.”

The scion of a decorated military family, McCain embraced his role as chairman of the armed services committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”

After losing to Obama in an electoral landslide, McCain returned to the Senate determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded. In the politics of the moment and in national political debate over the decades, McCain energetically advanced his ideas and punched back hard at critics — Trump not least among them.

Taking a long look back in his valedictory memoir, The Restless Wave, McCain wrote of the world he inhabited: “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace … I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely saviour of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement.

Throughout his long tenure in Congress, McCain played his role with trademark verve, at one hearing dismissing a protester by calling out, “Get out of here, you low-life scum.”

But it was just as notable when he held his sharp tongue, in service of a party or political gain.

Most remarkably, he stuck by Trump as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee even when Trump questioned his status as a war hero by saying: “I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain declared the comment offensive to veterans, but urged the men “put it behind us and move forward.”

His breaking point with Trump was the release a month before the election of a lewd audio in which Trump said he could kiss and grab women. McCain withdrew his support and said he’d write in “some good conservative Republican who’s qualified to be president.”

By the time McCain cast his vote against the GOP health bill, six months into Trump’s presidency, the two men were openly at odds. Trump railed against McCain publicly over the vote, and McCain remarked that he no longer listened to what Trump had to say because “there’s no point in it.”

By then, McCain had disclosed his brain cancer diagnosis and returned to Arizona to seek treatment. His vote to kill the GOP’s years-long Obamacare repeal drive — an issue McCain himself had campaigned on — came not long after the diagnosis, a surprising capstone to his legislative career.

In his final months, McCain did not go quietly, frequently jabbing at Trump and his policies from the remove of his Hidden Valley family retreat in Arizona. He opposed the president’s nominee for CIA director because of her past role in overseeing torture, scolded Trump for alienating U.S. allies at an international summit, labelled the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy “an affront to the decency of the American people” and denounced the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki as a “tragic mistake” in which the president put on “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

On Aug. 13, Trump signed into law a $716-billion (U.S.) defence policy bill named in honour of the senator. Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defence Authorization Act in a ceremony at a military base in New York — without one mention of McCain.

John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father was stationed in the military.

He followed his father and grandfather, the navy’s first father-and-son set of four-star admirals, to the Naval Academy, where he enrolled in what he described a “four-year course of insubordination and rebellion.” His family yawned at the performance. A predilection for what McCain described as “quick tempers, adventurous spirits, and love for the country’s uniform” was encoded in his family DNA.

In October 1967, McCain was on his 23rd bombing round over North Vietnam when he was shot out of the sky and taken prisoner.

Year upon year of solitary confinement, deprivation, beatings and other acts of torture left McCain so despairing that at one point he weakly attempted suicide. But he also later wrote that his captors had spared him the worst of the abuse inflicted on PoWs because his father was a famous admiral. “I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival,” he wrote in one of his books.

When McCain’s Vietnamese captors offered him early release as a propaganda ploy, McCain refused to play along, insisting that those captured first should be the first set free.

In his darkest hour in Vietnam, McCain’s will had been broken and he signed a confession that said, “I am a black criminal and I have performed deeds of an air pirate.”

Even then, though, McCain refused to make an audio recording of his confession and used stilted written language to signal he had signed it under duress. And, to the end of his captivity, he continued to exasperate his captors with his defiance.

Throughout, McCain played to the bleachers, shouting obscenities at guards to bolster the spirits of fellow captives. Appointed by the PoWs to act as camp entertainment officer, chaplain and communications chief, McCain imparted comic relief, literary tutorials, news of the day, even religious sustenance.

Bud Day, a former cellmate and Medal of Honor winner, said McCain’s PoW experience “took some great iron and turned him into steel.”

McCain returned home from his years as a PoW on crutches and never regained full mobility in his arms and leg.

He once said he’d “never known a prisoner of war who felt he could fully explain the experience to anyone who had not shared it.” Still he described the time as formative and “a bit of a turning point in me appreciating the value of serving a cause greater than your self-interest.”

But it did not tame his wild side, and his first marriage, to Carol Shepp, was a casualty of what he called “my greatest moral failing.” The marriage to Shepp, who had been in a crippling car accident while McCain was imprisoned, ended amiably. McCain admitted the breakup was caused by “my own selfishness and immaturity.”

One month after his divorce, McCain in 1981 married Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a wealthy beer distributor in Arizona.

In one day, McCain signed his navy discharge papers and flew west with his new wife to a new life. By 1982, he’d been elected to the House and four years later to an open Senate seat. He and Cindy had four children, to add to three from his first marriage. Their youngest was adopted from Bangladesh.

McCain cultivated a conservative voting record and a reputation as a tightwad with taxpayer dollars. But just months into his Senate career, he made what he called “the worst mistake” of his life. He participated in two meetings with bank regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a friend, campaign contributor and savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud.

As the industry collapsed, McCain was tagged as one of the Keating Five — senators who, to varying degrees, were accused of trying to persuade regulators to ease up on Keating. McCain was cited by the Senate ethics committee for “poor judgment.”

To have his honour questioned, he said, was in some ways worse than the torture he endured in Vietnam.

In the 1990s, McCain shouldered another wrenching issue, the long effort to account for American soldiers still missing from the war and to normalize relations with Vietnam.

“People don’t remember how ugly the PoW-MIA issue was,” former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey, a fellow Vietnam veteran, later recalled in crediting McCain for standing up to significant opposition. “I heard people scream in his face, holding him responsible for the deaths of PoWs.”

Over a three-decade Senate tenure, McCain became a standard-bearer for reforming campaign donations. He denounced pork-barrel spending for legislators’ pet projects and cultivated a reputation as a deficit hawk and an independent voice. His experience as a PoW made him a leading voice against the use of torture. He achieved his biggest legislative successes when making alliances with Democrats.

But faced with a tough GOP challenge for his Senate seat in 2010, McCain disowned chapters in his past and turned to the right on a number of hot-button issues, including gays in the military and climate change. And when the Supreme Court in 2010 overturned the campaign finance restrictions that he’d work so hard to enact, McCain seemed resigned.

“It is what it is,” he said.

After surviving that election, though, McCain took on conservatives in his party over the federal debt and Democrats over foreign policy. McCain never softened on his opposition to the U.S. use of torture, even in the recalibrations of the post-9/11 world. When the Senate in 2014 released a report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities after the Sept. 11 attacks, McCain said the issue wasn’t “about our enemies. It’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.”

During his final years in the Senate, McCain was perhaps the loudest advocate for U.S. military involvement overseas — in Iraq, Syria, Libya and more. That often made him a critic of first Obama and then Trump, and placed him further out of step with the growing isolationism within the GOP.

In October 2017, McCain unleashed some his most blistering criticism of Trump’s “America first” foreign policy approach — without mentioning the president by name — in describing a “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”

Few politicians matched McCain’s success as an author. His 1999 release Faith of My Fathers was a million seller that was highly praised and helped launch his run for president in 2000. His most recent bestseller and planned farewell, The Restless Wave, came out in May 2018.</s>Sen. John McCain, who faced down his captors in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp with jut-jawed defiance and later turned his rebellious streak into a 35-year political career that took him to Congress and the Republican presidential nomination, died Saturday after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.

McCain, with his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, was a fearless and outspoken voice on policy and politics to the end, unswerving in his defense of democratic values and unflinching in his criticism of his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump. He was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times but twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.

An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the GOP nomination, only to be overpowered by Democrat Barack Obama. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure.

After losing to Obama in an electoral landslide, McCain returned to the Senate determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded. In the politics of the moment and in national political debate over the decades, McCain energetically advanced his ideas and punched back hard at critics — Trump not least among them.

The scion of a decorated military family, McCain embraced his role as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defense of the nation.”

One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely savior of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement.

Taking a long look back in his valedictory memoir, “The Restless Wave,” McCain wrote of the world he inhabited: “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace. … I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

Throughout his long tenure in Congress, McCain played his role with trademark verve, at one hearing dismissing a protester by calling out, “Get out of here, you low-life scum.”

But it was just as notable when he held his sharp tongue, in service of a party or political gain.

Most remarkably, he stuck by Trump as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee even when Trump questioned his status as a war hero by saying: “I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain declared the comment offensive to veterans, but urged the men “put it behind us and move forward.”

His breaking point with Trump was the release a month before the election of a lewd audio in which Trump said he could kiss and grab women. McCain withdrew his support and said he’d write in “some good conservative Republican who’s qualified to be president.”

By the time McCain cast his vote against the GOP health bill, six months into Trump’s presidency, the two men were openly at odds. Trump railed against McCain publicly over the vote, and McCain remarked that he no longer listened to what Trump had to say because “there’s no point in it.”

By then, McCain had disclosed his brain cancer diagnosis and returned to Arizona to seek treatment. His vote to kill the GOP’s years-long Obamacare repeal drive — an issue McCain himself had campaigned on — came not long after the diagnosis, a surprising capstone to his legislative career.

In his final months, McCain did not go quietly, frequently jabbing at Trump and his policies from the remove of his Hidden Valley family retreat in Arizona. He opposed the president’s nominee for CIA director because of her past role in overseeing torture, scolded Trump for alienating U.S. allies at an international summit, labeled the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy “an affront to the decency of the American people” and denounced the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki as a “tragic mistake” in which the president put on “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

On Aug. 13, Trump signed into law a $716 billion defense policy bill named in honor of the senator. Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act in a ceremony at a military base in New York — without one mention of McCain.

John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 in the Panana Canal zone, where his father was stationed in the military.

He followed his father and grandfather, the Navy’s first father-and-son set of four-star admirals, to the Naval Academy, where he enrolled in what he described a “four-year course of insubordination and rebellion.” His family yawned at the performance. A predilection for what McCain described as “quick tempers, adventurous spirits, and love for the country’s uniform” was encoded in his family DNA.

On October 1967, McCain was on his 23rd bombing round over North Vietnam when he was shot out of the sky and taken prisoner.

Year upon year of solitary confinement, deprivation, beatings and other acts of torture left McCain so despairing that at one point he weakly attempted suicide. But he also later wrote that his captors had spared him the worst of the abuse inflicted on POWs because his father was a famous admiral. “I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival,” he wrote in one of his books.

When McCain’s Vietnamese captors offered him early release as a propaganda ploy, McCain refused to play along, insisting that those captured first should be the first set free.

In his darkest hour in Vietnam, McCain’s will had been broken and he signed a confession that said, “I am a black criminal and I have performed deeds of an air pirate.”

Even then, though, McCain refused to make an audio recording of his confession and used stilted written language to signal he had signed it under duress. And, to the end of his captivity, he continued to exasperate his captors with his defiance.

Throughout, McCain played to the bleachers, shouting obscenities at guards to bolster the spirits of fellow captives. Appointed by the POWs to act as camp entertainment officer, chaplain and communications chief, McCain imparted comic relief, literary tutorials, news of the day, even religious sustenance.

Bud Day, a former cellmate and Medal of Honor winner, said McCain’s POW experience “took some great iron and turned him into steel.”

McCain returned home from his years as a POW on crutches and never regained full mobility in his arms and leg.

He once said he’d “never known a prisoner of war who felt he could fully explain the experience to anyone who had not shared it.” Still he described the time as formative and “a bit of a turning point in me appreciating the value of serving a cause greater than your self-interest.”

But it did not tame his wild side, and his first marriage, to Carol Shepp, was a casualty of what he called “my greatest moral failing.” The marriage to Shepp, who had been in a crippling car accident while McCain was imprisoned, ended amiably. McCain admitted the breakup was caused by “my own selfishness and immaturity.”

One month after his divorce, McCain in 1981 married Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a wealthy beer distributor in Arizona.

In one day, McCain signed his Navy discharge papers and flew west with his new wife to a new life. By 1982, he’d been elected to the House and four years later to an open Senate seat. He and Cindy had four children, to add to three from his first marriage. Their youngest was adopted from Bangladesh.

McCain cultivated a conservative voting record and a reputation as a tightwad with taxpayer dollars. But just months into his Senate career, he made what he called “the worst mistake” of his life. He participated in two meetings with bank regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a friend, campaign contributor and savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud.

As the industry collapsed, McCain was tagged as one of the Keating Five — senators who, to varying degrees, were accused of trying to get regulators to ease up on Keating. McCain was cited by the Senate Ethics Committee for “poor judgment.”

To have his honor questioned, he said, was in some ways worse than the torture he endured in Vietnam.

In the 1990s, McCain shouldered another wrenching issue, the long effort to account for American soldiers still missing from the war and to normalize relations with Vietnam.

“People don’t remember how ugly the POW-MIA issue was,” former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, a fellow Vietnam veteran, later recalled in crediting McCain for standing up to significant opposition. “I heard people scream in his face, holding him responsible for the deaths of POWs.”

Over three decades in the Senate, McCain became a standard-bearer for reforming campaign donations. He denounced pork-barrel spending for legislators’ pet projects and cultivated a reputation as a deficit hawk and an independent voice. His experience as a POW made him a leading voice against the use of torture. He achieved his biggest legislative successes when making alliances with Democrats.

But faced with a tough GOP challenge for his Senate seat in 2010, McCain disowned chapters in his past and turned to the right on a number of hot-button issues, including gays in the military and climate change. And when the Supreme Court in 2010 overturned the campaign finance restrictions that he’d work so hard to enact, McCain seemed resigned.

“It is what it is,” he said.

After surviving that election, though, McCain took on conservatives in his party over the federal debt and Democrats over foreign policy. McCain never softened on his opposition to the U.S. use of torture, even in the recalibrations of the post-9/11 world. When the Senate in 2014 released a report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities after the 9/11 attacks, McCain said the issue wasn’t “about our enemies. It’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.”

During his final years in the Senate, McCain was perhaps the loudest advocate for U.S. military involvement overseas - in Iraq, Syria, Libya and more. That often made him a critic of first Obama and then Trump, and placed him further out of step with the growing isolationism within the GOP.

In October 2017, McCain unleashed some his most blistering criticism of Trump’s “America first” foreign policy approach — without mentioning the president by name — in describing a “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”

Few politicians matched McCain’s success as an author. His 1999 release “Faith Of My Fathers” was a million seller that was highly praised and helped launch his run for president in 2000. His most recent bestseller and planned farewell, “The Restless Wave,” came out in May 2018.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. John McCain, who faced down his captors in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp with jut-jawed defiance and later turned his rebellious streak into a 35-year political career that took him to Congress and the Republican presidential nomination, died Saturday after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.

McCain, with his irascible grin and fighter-pilot moxie, was a fearless and outspoken voice on policy and politics to the end, unswerving in his defense of democratic values and unflinching in his criticism of his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump. He was elected to the Senate from Arizona six times but twice thwarted in seeking the presidency.

An upstart presidential bid in 2000 didn’t last long. Eight years later, he fought back from the brink of defeat to win the GOP nomination, only to be overpowered by Democrat Barack Obama. McCain chose a little-known Alaska governor as his running mate in that race, and turned Sarah Palin into a national political figure.

After losing to Obama in an electoral landslide, McCain returned to the Senate determined not to be defined by a failed presidential campaign in which his reputation as a maverick had faded. In the politics of the moment and in national political debate over the decades, McCain energetically advanced his ideas and punched back hard at critics — Trump not least among them.

The scion of a decorated military family, McCain embraced his role as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said simply: “That I made a major contribution to the defense of the nation.”

One dramatic vote he cast in the twilight of his career in 2017 will not soon be forgotten, either: As the decisive “no” on Senate GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, McCain became the unlikely savior of Obama’s trademark legislative achievement.

Taking a long look back in his valedictory memoir, “The Restless Wave,” McCain wrote of the world he inhabited: “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace. … I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

Throughout his long tenure in Congress, McCain played his role with trademark verve, at one hearing dismissing a protester by calling out, “Get out of here, you low-life scum.”

But it was just as notable when he held his sharp tongue, in service of a party or political gain.

Most remarkably, he stuck by Trump as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee even when Trump questioned his status as a war hero by saying: “I like people who weren’t captured.” McCain declared the comment offensive to veterans, but urged the men “put it behind us and move forward.”

His breaking point with Trump was the release a month before the election of a lewd audio in which Trump said he could kiss and grab women. McCain withdrew his support and said he’d write in “some good conservative Republican who’s qualified to be president.”

By the time McCain cast his vote against the GOP health bill, six months into Trump’s presidency, the two men were openly at odds. Trump railed against McCain publicly over the vote, and McCain remarked that he no longer listened to what Trump had to say because “there’s no point in it.”

By then, McCain had disclosed his brain cancer diagnosis and returned to Arizona to seek treatment. His vote to kill the GOP’s years-long Obamacare repeal drive — an issue McCain himself had campaigned on — came not long after the diagnosis, a surprising capstone to his legislative career.

In his final months, McCain did not go quietly, frequently jabbing at Trump and his policies from the remove of his Hidden Valley family retreat in Arizona. He opposed the president’s nominee for CIA director because of her past role in overseeing torture, scolded Trump for alienating U.S. allies at an international summit, labeled the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy “an affront to the decency of the American people” and denounced the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki as a “tragic mistake” in which the president put on “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

On Aug. 13, Trump signed into law a $716 billion defense policy bill named in honor of the senator. Trump signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act in a ceremony at a military base in New York — without one mention of McCain.

John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 in the Panana Canal zone, where his father was stationed in the military.

He followed his father and grandfather, the Navy’s first father-and-son set of four-star admirals, to the Naval Academy, where he enrolled in what he described a “four-year course of insubordination and rebellion.” His family yawned at the performance. A predilection for what McCain described as “quick tempers, adventurous spirits, and love for the country’s uniform” was encoded in his family DNA.

On October 1967, McCain was on his 23rd bombing round over North Vietnam when he was shot out of the sky and taken prisoner.

Year upon year of solitary confinement, deprivation, beatings and other acts of torture left McCain so despairing that at one point he weakly attempted suicide. But he also later wrote that his captors had spared him the worst of the abuse inflicted on POWs because his father was a famous admiral. “I knew that my father’s identity was directly related to my survival,” he wrote in one of his books.

When McCain’s Vietnamese captors offered him early release as a propaganda ploy, McCain refused to play along, insisting that those captured first should be the first set free.

In his darkest hour in Vietnam, McCain’s will had been broken and he signed a confession that said, “I am a black criminal and I have performed deeds of an air pirate.”

Even then, though, McCain refused to make an audio recording of his confession and used stilted written language to signal he had signed it under duress. And, to the end of his captivity, he continued to exasperate his captors with his defiance.

Throughout, McCain played to the bleachers, shouting obscenities at guards to bolster the spirits of fellow captives. Appointed by the POWs to act as camp entertainment officer, chaplain and communications chief, McCain imparted comic relief, literary tutorials, news of the day, even religious sustenance.

Bud Day, a former cellmate and Medal of Honor winner, said McCain’s POW experience “took some great iron and turned him into steel.”

McCain returned home from his years as a POW on crutches and never regained full mobility in his arms and leg.

He once said he’d “never known a prisoner of war who felt he could fully explain the experience to anyone who had not shared it.” Still he described the time as formative and “a bit of a turning point in me appreciating the value of serving a cause greater than your self-interest.”

But it did not tame his wild side, and his first marriage, to Carol Shepp, was a casualty of what he called “my greatest moral failing.” The marriage to Shepp, who had been in a crippling car accident while McCain was imprisoned, ended amiably. McCain admitted the breakup was caused by “my own selfishness and immaturity.”

One month after his divorce, McCain in 1981 married Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a wealthy beer distributor in Arizona.

In one day, McCain signed his Navy discharge papers and flew west with his new wife to a new life. By 1982, he’d been elected to the House and four years later to an open Senate seat. He and Cindy had four children, to add to three from his first marriage. Their youngest was adopted from Bangladesh.

McCain cultivated a conservative voting record and a reputation as a tightwad with taxpayer dollars. But just months into his Senate career, he made what he called “the worst mistake” of his life. He participated in two meetings with bank regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a friend, campaign contributor and savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud.

As the industry collapsed, McCain was tagged as one of the Keating Five — senators who, to varying degrees, were accused of trying to get regulators to ease up on Keating. McCain was cited by the Senate Ethics Committee for “poor judgment.”

To have his honor questioned, he said, was in some ways worse than the torture he endured in Vietnam.

In the 1990s, McCain shouldered another wrenching issue, the long effort to account for American soldiers still missing from the war and to normalize relations with Vietnam.

“People don’t remember how ugly the POW-MIA issue was,” former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, a fellow Vietnam veteran, later recalled in crediting McCain for standing up to significant opposition. “I heard people scream in his face, holding him responsible for the deaths of POWs.”

Over a xx-year Senate tenure (took office 1987), McCain became a standard-bearer for reforming campaign donations. He denounced pork-barrel spending for legislators’ pet projects and cultivated a reputation as a deficit hawk and an independent voice. His experience as a POW made him a leading voice against the use of torture. He achieved his biggest legislative successes when making alliances with Democrats.

But faced with a tough GOP challenge for his Senate seat in 2010, McCain disowned chapters in his past and turned to the right on a number of hot-button issues, including gays in the military and climate change. And when the Supreme Court in 2010 overturned the campaign finance restrictions that he’d work so hard to enact, McCain seemed resigned.

“It is what it is,” he said.

After surviving that election, though, McCain took on conservatives in his party over the federal debt and Democrats over foreign policy. McCain never softened on his opposition to the U.S. use of torture, even in the recalibrations of the post-9/11 world. When the Senate in 2014 released a report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities after the 9/11 attacks, McCain said the issue wasn’t “about our enemies. It’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.”

During his final years in the Senate, McCain was perhaps the loudest advocate for U.S. military involvement overseas – in Iraq, Syria, Libya and more. That often made him a critic of first Obama and then Trump, and placed him further out of step with the growing isolationism within the GOP.

In October 2017, McCain unleashed some his most blistering criticism of Trump’s “America first” foreign policy approach — without mentioning the president by name — in describing a “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”

Few politicians matched McCain’s success as an author. His 1999 release “Faith Of My Fathers” was a million seller that was highly praised and helped launch his run for president in 2000. His most recent bestseller and planned farewell, “The Restless Wave,” came out in May 2018.</s>Sen. John McCain, an admiral’s son whose rebellious streak nearly got him expelled from Annapolis but helped him survive North Vietnamese torture and rise to the top of the Republican Party, has died.

The cause was a brain tumor known as a glioblastoma, which was diagnosed in July 2017. On Aug. 24, his family said that McCain had decided to discontinue medical treatment, which had included chemotherapy and radiation treatments that left him weakened as he battled for his life at home in Arizona. He hadn’t been in the Senate since Dec. 7, when he cast his last vote.

McCain catapulted to national prominence with his 2000 bid for the GOP presidential nomination, when his willingness to challenge ideas held sacred by his party helped him catch fire among Republicans in a long-shot bid against George W. Bush.

McCain rode in a bus dubbed “the Straight Talk Express,” taking hours of questions from a rotating group of reporters. He won the New Hampshire primary before a loss in South Carolina from which he never truly recovered. He wrote afterward that despite the disappointment, the campaign was “a hell of a lot of fun.”

Read: John McCain is a war hero—but think twice before saying he’s ‘battling’ cancer

Four years later, McCain won the Republican presidential nomination, but lost to Barack Obama, then a first-term senator. He moved past his disappointment to carve out a reputation as a leading internationalist who warned that Russia posed a threat to the post-Cold War order—one of the Senate’s most ardent military hawks and one of the few willing to vocally challenge President Donald Trump.

McCain called Mr. Trump “poorly informed” and “impulsive,” and in a thinly veiled shot at Trump in 2017 warned about “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.” Trump said he liked “people who weren’t captured,” and rarely missed an opportunity to criticize McCain for voting against a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, even when the senator was battling an aggressive cancer.

Condolences and statements honoring his life began to roll in from the political sphere and beyond, including from Trump:

Read more about his life at WSJ.com.</s>I couldn’t bring myself to write this piece until today. It’s not that I didn’t try. But something in my mind convinced my hands that if I put it off, somehow John McCain might be with us a little longer. I needed that. The country needed that.

But a call from Cindy late this week told me it was time.

I’ve never known Washington without John McCain. I started on Capitol Hill more than 30 years ago interning for Dennis DeConcini, “the other senator from Arizona,” which is what they call every Arizona senator not named McCain. When I eventually became the other senator from Arizona, too, I came to understand that it’s a title that comes with being in the shadow of a giant. It was like having an older brother to protect me. The guy nobody wants to mess with.

But John McCain has been much more than that to me. Just as he taught the country the value of standing alone to do what is right, he taught me that as well. Early in my service in the House of Representatives, I managed to incur the wrath of a host of locally elected officials and newspaper columnists by challenging funding for a number of parochial spending projects. I was feeling pretty low, wondering if I was doing the right thing.

In the midst of my inner tumult, on a flight from Washington to Arizona, Sen. McCain made his way back to my seat with a stern look on his face. “Oh, no,” I thought. “Not him, too.” He stuck his finger in my chest and demanded: “Don’t. Back. Down! You’re in the right, they’ll come around.” It was all that I needed.

Over the years, I’ve been educated and entertained traveling a few miles with John McCain. From Douglas, Ariz., to Dixville Notch, N.H.; from Ajo, Ariz., to Afghanistan. I’ve heard him inspire and motivate soldiers in isolated outposts. I’ve seen him hold court with heads of state and empathize with exiled dissidents. I’ve seen him captivate journalists with a knowledge of obscure sports trivia and literature on the Straight Talk Express. I’ve seen his face light up as he received calls from Cindy and the kids.

But perhaps what says the most about John are the miles he usually traveled alone, such as during the mid-1990s to a veterans home in Northeast Washington to visit former Democratic congressman Mo Udall. By then suffering through the late stages of Parkinson’s disease, Mo often didn’t know John was there. But still John went, not for any political benefit, but to show love and respect for a lonely friend who meant so much to him and who had given so much to his country.

Life’s last mile took John to his beloved ranch in northern Arizona. It was there a few months ago where we sat for an hour or so, just the two of us, watching Oak Creek gently ripple under the shade of giant cottonwood trees. He named the birds singing above us in the branches. He quoted lines from the novels he loved. We reminisced about the past, of personalities come and gone. He spoke wistfully of those he admired and expressed optimism that such leaders would rise up in the future.

And now, in a way that would probably have him making wisecracks, we are wistful for John McCain. We may never see his like again, but it is his reflection of America that we need now more than ever. He was far too self-deprecating to ever have thought of himself as just such a towering figure, so I will go ahead and say it. He showed us who we are and who we can be when we are at our best. And he devoted his life to service and to the exalted idea of America that was bigger and better than him. Bigger than us all. His fidelity to that idea, and his idealism in balancing fierce political battles with a determination to always see the good and find the humanity in his opponents is an example that transcended politics and made him the man that he was.

As I got up to leave that day, he said, “The doctors tell me I’m halfway there.” He paused. “The more I see this end coming, the more I am grateful for what I have.”

Today, I am grateful for John McCain. I’m grateful for the long and meaningful miles he traveled, and for having the privilege of having traveled just a few of those miles with him.
U.S. Senator and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain (R–AZ) dies at the age of 81.