MCCAIN CALLED ON US TO BE BETTER
Funeral tributes to senator take a sideswipe at Trump
DONALD Trump was given a couple of sideswipes yesterday – at the funeral of a war hero he detested.
The US President was not invited to the service for Senator John Mccain who died of cancer last week.
And in his absence, Trump’s White House predecessor and Mccain’s daughter left the congregation at Washington’s National Cathedral in no doubt as to why in their eulogies. Barack Obama said the tortured Vietnam prisoner of war – whose service record Trump belittled – had made him and George W Bush, also at the funeral, “better Presidents”.
PRECIOUS
He added: “He made the Senate better. He made this country better. For someone like John to ask (me) while he was still alive to speak of him when he has gone is a precious and singular honour.” And beforehand, in a tearful address, 81-year-old Mccain’s daughter Meghan, 33, told the packed cathedral her father’s death was “the passing of American greatness – the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly”. Then, in an apparent dig at Trump’s draft dodging, she spoke of “those who lived lives of comfort and privilege” while her father “suffered and served”. Among the mourners were Mccain’s 106-year-old mother Roberta, his wife Cindy, 64, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Actor Warren Beatty was one of the pallbearers. Trump’s daughter Ivanka was in the congregation. Mccain will be buried today at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. karen.rockett@sundaymirror.co.uk