WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s impeachment night crack that the late Michigan Rep. John Dingell might be “looking up” from hell drew wide scorn and scant defense from his allies Thursday, on the cusp of the 2020 election year and just days before Christmas.

“I was already having a really hard holiday,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, the congressman’s widow, told reporters in the Capitol. To the president, she tweeted: “Your hurtful words just made my healing much harder.”

Trump’s swipe at John Dingell, who died in February, came in swing-state Michigan on Wednesday night as the House voted to impeach him on abuse and obstruction charges. Onstage, Trump quoted Debbie Dingell as having thanked him for “A-plus” treatment after her husband’s death.

“John would be so thrilled,” Trump quoted Dingell’s widow as saying. “He’s looking down.”

Trump quipped to his audience in Battle Creek: “Maybe he’s looking up. I don’t know.”

Dingell, an Army veteran who spent 59 years in Congress, served longer than anyone else in U.S. history.

It was the president’s latest attack on a deceased veteran and his family, part of a community of 20 million Americans that Trump claims to revere. Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has aimed particular ire at Republican Sen. John McCain, even after the Arizona senator’s death from brain cancer in 2018.

He has also harshly criticized the family of Humayun Khan, an Army captain killed in a car bombing in Iraq as he tried to save other troops. Khan’s Muslim father spoke out about candidate Trump at the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

Trump’s attacks Wednesday night on the late Dingell — during the president’s longest-ever campaign rally, at two hours and one minute — drew rebukes even from his staunchest allies.

“If he said that, he should apologize,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a retired Air Force defense lawyer and prosecutor who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was awarded a Bronze Star.