AKIPRESS.COM - U.S. Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who ran for president in 2008 as a maverick Republican and became a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, died on Saturday. He was 81.

A senator from Arizona for more than three decades, McCain had been suffering from brain cancer since July 2017 and had not been at the U.S. Capitol this year, Reuters said.

He died on Saturday afternoon at his ranch in Arizona with his wife, Cindy, and other family members at his bedside.

McCain frequently battled with Trump and his family has said he did not want the president to attend his funeral.

Flags flew at half-staff at the White House on Sunday. Trump has tweeted his “deepest sympathies and respect” to McCain’s family, although he added no words of praise for McCain himself

All five living former presidents - Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter - paid tribute to McCain’s courage and character.

Cindy McCain said her husband had “passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best.”