In Eulogy, Meghan McCain Takes Swing at Trump

She references 'Make America Great Again'
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 1, 2018 10:51 AM CDT
Updated Sep 1, 2018 12:18 PM CDT

Meghan McCain paid tribute to her late father Saturday morning at the Washington National Cathedral, and though she didn't mention President Trump by name, her perceived rebuke of him in her eulogy is garnering notice. Time and Reuters have her lines:

  • "We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served."
  • "The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great."

CNN reports "loud and sustained applause" followed that last line. Reuters calls her eulogy a "tearful but forceful tribute" during which she said McCain had told her to "show them how tough you are" when delivering it. One last excerpt: "My father had every reason to think the world was an awful place. My father had every reason to think the world was not worth fighting for. My father had every reason to think the world was worth leaving. He did not think any of those things. Like the hero of his favorite book [Robert Jordan, of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls], John McCain took the opposite view." President Trump was not invited, but Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were in attendance. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush also gave eulogies. The AP notes Obama made a "not-so-veiled" reference to Trump too:

  • Obama: "So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty, tracking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage. It's a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born in fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that."
  • Bush: "John's voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder—we are better than this, America is better than this."
(More John McCain stories.)

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