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Trump offers condolences following death of Richard Lugar

April 29, 2019 GMT

FILE - In a Jan. 16, 2008 file photo, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, points during a press conference in Kiev, Ukraine. Former Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican foreign policy sage known for leading efforts to help the former Soviet states dismantle and secure much of their nuclear arsenal, died Sunday, April 28, 2019 at the Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute in Virginia. He was 87. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is offering his condolences following the death of longtime Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar.

Trump says in a statement Monday that he and first lady Melania Trump extend their “deepest condolences to the citizens of Indiana and the entire Lugar family following the loss of a great American and public servant.”

Trump is calling Lugar “a proud Hoosier and patriot” and says he “leaves behind a long record of legislative accomplishments and a tremendous legacy of service.”

The statement was sent along with a photo of Trump meeting with Lugar in the Oval Office last June.

Lugar was a leading Republican voice on foreign policy during his 36 years in the Senate. He died Sunday at age 87 at a hospital in Virginia.