Although Trump claimed the Senate was one vote away, in reality the vote was only to go to conference with the House on the Senate’s “skinny repeal” of Obamacare.

The President did not repeat that reference, which has become a familiar refrain in his stump speech, on Friday evening.

Trump expressed support for McCain when the senator’s tumor was first diagnosed.

“Senator John McCain has always been a fighter,” the President said in a statement at the time. “Melania and I send our thoughts and prayers to Senator McCain, Cindy, and their entire family. Get well soon.”

A White House official said Trump also called McCain following word of the senator’s diagnosis.

And before that health care vote, the President called McCain an “American hero” in a tweet.

Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House last December, Trump said he had talked with the senator’s wife.

“I did speak to Cindy McCain, and I wished her well. I wished John well. They’ve headed back, but I understand he’ll come if we ever needed his vote, which hopefully we won’t. But the word is John will come back if we need his vote, and it’s too bad,” Trump said.

He continued, “It’s tough. He’s going through a very, he’s going through a very tough time. There’s no question about it, but he will come back if we need his vote.”

The two have had a tortured relationship and McCain, who was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, in July 2017, has been one of the administration’s most outspoken Republican critics.

“He is not a war hero,” Trump told pollster Frank Luntz, who was hosting a July 2015 question-and-answer session at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa.

“He is a war hero,” Luntz interjected.

“He is a war hero because he was captured?” Trump said, cutting him off. “I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you. He is a war hero because he was captured. OK, you can have — I believe perhaps he is a war hero.”