“We have said we share the democratic aspirations and criticism of the Morsi government that led millions of Egyptians into the streets,” McCain said. “We’ve also said that the circumstances of [Morsi’s] removal was a coup”

A spokesman for the interim government, Sherief Shawki, immediately dismissed the characterization. “There is a roadmap, which means that what happened was not a coup and that it was Egyptian people who decided on the roadmap,” he told Reuters in an interview. Shawki also said the involvement of McCain and Graham was unwelcome, adding, “We don’t want foreign intervention to be imposed on us.”

In a statement later on Tuesday, distributed by Egypt’s Middle East News Agency and reported by Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh, a top media advisor to Egypt’s interim president, Adly Mansour, offered a stronger rebuke. The statement accused McCain of twisting facts, and dismissed his remarks as “clumsy,” or “irresponsible,” depending on the translation.