White House returns flag to half-staff for Senator McCain after complaints
WASHINGTON — As American flags around the nation remained at half-staff Monday to honor Sen. John McCain, a Republican who had survived a Vietnam War prison camp and weathered the gradual coarsening of politics within his own party, the White House flew its own flag full staff — and then lowered it again — amid a public outcry that the president had stayed quiet as others mourned.
In a statement issued Monday afternoon, the president broke a period of silence by issuing a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of McCain’s interment.
“Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country,” Trump said in a statement, “and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment.”
The delay over the flag was the clearest indication yet that Trump had little inclination to participate in a national mourning period over McCain, who died Saturday after a yearlong battle with brain cancer.
In his final months, McCain had requested that the president not attend his funeral. Trump responded by painting McCain as a political foe who voted against his own party’s interests.
On Monday, the president said that several of his advisers, including John Kelly, the chief of staff; John Bolton, the national security adviser, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis would attend services for McCain in his absence.
McCain appeared to have anticipated how the day might unfold. And for the last time, he stepped in to call for patriotism over politics when Trump would not.
Speaking in a posthumous statement delivered through a top aide, McCain issued a pointed rebuttal of Trump-era politics, although he never mentioned the president by name.
“We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe,” McCain wrote in a statement delivered by Rick Davis, his family spokesman and former campaign manager. “We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.”