WASHINGTON President Donald Trump often fabricates accomplishments for himself and at times falsely strips them from others, but a new lie manages both: Claiming credit for a veterans program that his late nemesis Sen. John McCain actually did help create.

The vets the VA was in horrible shape. Now, they have choice. And nobody could get choice, he told ABC News recently. John McCain couldnt get it. Nobody could get it. They tried for years. They couldnt get it. I got choice for the vets.

In fact, the provision of the law that Trump touts most often the ability of veterans to get private medical care if VA waitlists were too long was something that McCain specifically pushed for and eventually won in his negotiations with then-Veterans Affairs Committee chairman, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

He has no ethics of any kind, said Mark Salter, a former speechwriter to McCain, the longtime Republican senator from Arizona who died last year of brain cancer. Nothing is too outlandish or dishonest.