President Trump says he’s ready to “swear on whatever” that he never called slain American service members “losers” or dissed Sen. John McCain. In late-night tweets on Thursday, the president claimed a story by The Atlantic about him mocking U.S. service members killed in combat was nothing more than a plot by “jealous failures” to sabotage his chances in the Nov. 3 election. “I was never a big fan of John McCain, disagreed with him on many things including ridiculous endless wars and the lack of success he had in dealing with the VA and our great Vets, but the lowering of our Nations American Flags, and the first class funeral he was given by our Country, had to be approved by me, as President, & I did so without hesitation or complaint,” he said, claiming he felt it was “well deserved.” His tweets largely repeated comments he made to reporters calling the report a “disgraceful situation” and blaming it on “failures in the administration that I got rid of.”

“Also, I never called John a loser and swear on whatever, or whoever, I was asked to swear on, that I never called our great fallen soldiers anything other than HEROES,” he wrote. Trump has, in fact, in the past described McCain as a “loser,” and even tweeted out a quote of himself issuing the insult in 2015, along with an article recounting his comments. At that time, he also called McCain a “dummy” and insisted he could not be considered a war hero because he was captured.