It is no longer news that Senator John McCain passed on, on Saturday from Brain cancer. But what is news is that the former presidential aspirant who
It is no longer news that Senator John McCain passed on, on Saturday from Brain cancer. But what is news is that the former presidential aspirant who never made it to the oval office doesn’t want President Donald Trump at his funeral. This he did made known shortly before he passed on. Obviously, the antipathy between the Arizona senator and the President has not been stilled by his death.
McCain had been planning his funeral services over the last year and his family made it clear that Trump wasn’t invited, a position that has not changed, according to two family friends. Former rivals and Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, the two men who kept him from the White House, will eulogize him. If those plans hold, McCain will be sending a clear final message to Trump, whom he was very critical of, after making clear when he was alive, that he saw the President’s demeanor, populist style and global outlook as antithetical to America’s founding values and global role.
McCain’s service of songs at the National Cathedral may well become the biggest meeting of the political establishment and visiting global elites so far seen during the Trump presidency. The President’s absence and failure to lead a grateful nation in mourning would, for McCain, reflects the fracture with the traditional ruling classes that he successfully made the focus of his 2016 campaign and that has become a motif of his presidency. Not being invited to preside over a great national occasion will surely sting for a man like Trump, who relishes the theatrics of the presidency.
McCain, who died at the age of 81, at his ranch in Arizona was diagnosed with brain tumor last July and had begun treatment of it. But two weeks ago, he discontinued treatment. He would have been 82 today. A cat with none lives, he survived plane crashes, several bouts of skin cancer and brushes with political oblivion. He was a naval bomber pilot, prisoner of war, conservative maverick, giant of the Senate, twice-defeated presidential candidate and an abrasive American hero with a twinkle in his eye.
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