Trump plays golf a s three former US presidents pay tribute to John McCain
Bush and Obama join distraught daughter for thinly veiled attacks on President during funeral
US President Donald Trump gave one final insult to political enemy John McCain yesterday – by going to his golf club on the day of the late Senator’s funeral.
Trump – who delayed paying tribute to the widely-admired veteran politician who died last week – was pointedly not invited to the funeral.
The US leader got into his motorcade and left the White House at 10.30am, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and MAGA hat, and travelled to his golf club in Virginia, where he spent the morning sending tweets criticising the Department of Justice, the FBI and threatening Canada.
Meanwhile, John McCain’s daughter opened his memorial service by posing
‘America has no need to be made great again’
her father’s legacy as a direct challenge to President Trump, setting a tone that echoed the senator’s own fighting spirit as former Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush eulogised him at the Washington National Cathedral.
Bush and Obama, both challenged by McCain in their bids for the White House, drew on the senator’s legacy at home and abroad to talk of the nation’s values in remarks that at times seemed a clear rebuke of Trump and his brand of politics.
Obama spoke of the long talks he and McCain would have privately in the Oval Office and the senator’s understanding that America’s security and influence came not from ‘our ability to bend others to our will’ but universal values of rule of law and human rights.
‘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,’ Obama said in another not-so-veiled nod to Trump.
‘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 said one of the great gifts in his life was becoming friends with his former White House rival.
But mostly Bush recalled a champion for the ‘forgotten people’ at home and abroad whose legacy will serve as a reminder, even in times of doubt, of the power of America as more than a physical place but a ‘carrier of human aspirations’.
‘John’s voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder – we are better than this, America is better than this,’ Bush said. The Republican, and
Obama, a Democrat, spoke during the service at McCain’s request.
But Meghan McCain made sure Trump, although absent, was part of the memorial in another way, levelling pointed criticism at him.
‘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 said, her voice first choking back tears then raising to anger.
Later she said to applause: ‘The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.’