By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) – Meghan McCain, John McCain's daughter, opened a memorial service Saturday for her father with a shot over the bow at President Donald Trump and his token slogan.
“America does not boast because she has no need to. The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again, because America was always great, ” McCain said, glaring determinantly as applause roared out in the National Cathedral.
“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 lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served, ” she added in an emotional tribute to her father.
The comments appear to be directed at Trump who was granted five deferments for compulsory military service during the Vietnam War, one of which was for bone spurs in his foot after he graduated college.
Meghan McCain's pointed rhetoric also appears to challenge Trump's now infamous dismissal of her father's service during the Vietnam War, when he was held captive for five years and repeatedly tortured.
Trump was not present for Saturday's private funeral service after McCain's family declined to invite the president. He was instead at his golf club in Virginia.
But both former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama — who bested McCain in his successive bids for America's highest office — were on hand to deliver their reflections on McCain's legacy.
“So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage, ” Obama said. “It's a politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that. ”
Bush, who like McCain hailed from the Republican Party, said McCain “loved freedom with the passion of a man who knew its absence. ”
“Perhaps above all, John detested the abuse of power; could not abide bigots and swaggering despots, ” he added,
McCain will be buried Sunday at his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
