WASHINGTON - Former US presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, once rivals of the late Senator John McCain, praised him in eulogies on Saturday and joined his daughter at a memorial service in subtle and not-so-subtle rebukes of President Donald Trump.
Without naming Trump, who did not attend the service, Meghan McCain condemned the president in remarks that at times drew applause and came after she said her dad told her to "show them how tough you are" with her eulogy.
"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," she said, speaking forcefully and, at times, through tears.
Taking aim at Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again," she said McCain's America was always great.
For years Trump feuded publicly with McCain and mocked his military service, continuing to knock him even after he grew ill. The former Republican senator from Arizona died on Aug. 25 from brain cancer, days shy of his 82nd birthday.
Trump, also a Republican, spent Saturday tweeting on other subjects and went to one of his private golf clubs in Virginia.
Nearly every major US political leader attended the memorial service, and while Trump himself was absent, his presence was felt through the content of the tributes.
And by design. McCain asked Obama and Bush to deliver eulogies while the family made clear that Trump was not welcome.
Obama, who beat McCain in the 2008 US presidential election, hailed the one-time prisoner of war for his commitment to truth and core democratic values, qualities that some critics see lacking in Trump, a former reality television star and New York City real estate mogul.
"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 in fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that."
Obama also noted McCain's support for a free press. Trump has repeatedly called the media the enemy of the American people.
"HE COULD NOT ABIDE BIGOTS AND SWAGGERING DESPOTS"
Bush, in his eulogy, described McCain as a man with a code.
"He loved freedom with a passion of a man who knew its absence. He respected the dignity inherent in every life, a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators," Bush said. "Perhaps above all, John detested the abuse of power. He could not abide bigots and swaggering despots."
Trump has sought to forge close relationships with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The former US presidents joked about McCain's imperfections, while saying he made them better leaders. Their presence as eulogists was a clear signal from McCain of his desire for more civility and bipartisanship in Washington.
The senator's body, which had lain in state at the US Capitol, arrived at the cathedral with a motorcade that first stopped at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. There his wife, Cindy McCain, laid a wreath to honor those who died in the war.
Uniformed members of the military slowly carried the coffin into the soaring cathedral and back out again after the 2-1/2 hour service.
Top members of Trump's administration, including his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, attended, as did White House chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton.
Other guests included former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, comedian Jay Leno, and former senators Bob Dole and John Kerry.
A powerful pipe organ and Navy brass ensemble played during the service and renowned opera singer Renee Fleming sang a stirring rendition of "Danny Boy," drawing tears from Cindy McCain and others in the audience.
John McCain was a leading voice for revamping the country's immigration, campaign finance and environmental laws. But it was his military service, punctuated by years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, that molded his political life.
Rising to the rank of captain in the US Navy, he was shot down over Hanoi while on a bombing mission in 1967. Held as a prisoner until 1973, he was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors in a jail that Americans dubbed the "Hanoi Hilton."
As a presidential candidate, Trump mocked McCain for getting captured in Vietnam. Trump himself received five deferments that got him out of serving in the military.
On Sunday McCain will be buried during a private service in Annapolis, Maryland, at the US Naval Academy. McCain was a member of the Academy's Class of 1958.
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WASHINGTON - Washington's bitterly divided leaders came together on Friday to praise the late Senator John McCain as an embodiment of America's fighting spirit, idealism and sense of humor, but there was one notable absentee: President Donald Trump.
At a Capitol Rotunda ceremony, Republicans and Democrats called a temporary political truce to honor McCain on the third of five days of memorial celebrations in Arizona and Washington for the Vietnam War hero and two-time Republican presidential candidate.
"He would fight tooth and nail for his vision of the common good. Depending on the issue, you knew John would either be your staunchest ally or your most stubborn opponent," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who frequently clashed with McCain on issues such as healthcare and campaign finance reform.
"He had America’s fighting spirit, our noble idealism, our solemn patriotism, and our slightly irreverent streak -- all rolled into one," McConnell said.
The absence of Trump - who on Friday will travel to one of his private golf clubs for a campaign fundraiser - was a reflection of the animosity between the two men that lingered even after McCain's death on Saturday from brain cancer.
Vice President Mike Pence participated and spoke, saying Trump had asked him to attend to pay his respects.
"He will be missed. As President Trump said yesterday, we respect his service to the country," Pence said. "I never traveled with a colleague who was better to our enlisted (military service members) or harder on our generals."
Trump will also miss Saturday's service at the Washington National Cathedral, where former President Barack Obama, the Democrat who defeated McCain in 2008, and former Republican President George W. Bush, who beat McCain in their party's 2000 presidential nominating contest, will pay tribute to McCain.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was sometimes on the receiving end of McCain's "distinct brand of candor" and said McCain relished a good fight.
"This is one of the bravest souls our nation has ever produced," Ryan said.
After the ceremony, McCain's family and those in attendance filed past the coffin. Later, the public was to pass through the Rotunda for six hours to pay their respects to McCain, whose coffin was placed atop a pine board catafalque originally built in 1865 for President Abraham Lincoln's casket.
The Trump-McCain feud dated back to at least 2015, not long after Trump kicked off his presidential campaign. McCain condemned the candidate's hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration, accusing Trump of "firing up the crazies."
The New York businessman hit back, saying of McCain's 5-1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam: "He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured." Trump received five deferments that got him out of military service.
More recently, McCain accused Trump of kowtowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin at July's Helsinki summit, calling it "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory."
Trump in turn delayed issuing any statement after McCain's death. Earlier this week, the American flag atop the White House that had been at half-staff was raised back up, then lowered again after Trump drew fire from Congress and veterans.
McCain helped plan the events around his funeral. He made it clear to family and friends that he wanted Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden, Bush and Obama to speak - but that Trump was not welcome.
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PHOENIX - The body of John McCain, who endured 5-1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and went on to become a lion of the U.S. Senate and a two-time Republican candidate for president, will lie in state on Wednesday in the Arizona state capitol.
The daylong public viewing of his casket was the start of five days of memorial tributes in Phoenix and Washington for McCain, who died of brain cancer on Saturday at his ranch in Cornville, Arizona. He was 81.
"We are privileged as a state to have called him a fellow Arizonan, and we are honored to have the opportunity to celebrate his life," Governor Doug Ducey said on Twitter early Wednesday.
McCain parlayed his status as a Vietnam War hero into a decades-long political career. Over the past two years he has stood out as a key rival and critic of U.S. President Donald Trump. The bad blood between the two persisted after McCain's death, with his family asking Trump not to attend his funeral and the White House waffling on how to mourn a prominent fellow Republican.
McCain will be just the third person to lie in state in the Rotunda of the Arizona statehouse over the past 40 years, organizers of the ceremony said. The two others were state Senator Marilyn Jarrett in 2006 and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens, a Tucson resident, in 1980.
Following a Thursday memorial at a Phoenix church, McCain's body will be flown to Washington where he will lie in state on Friday at the U.S. Capitol before a Saturday funeral at the Washington National Cathedral.
On Sunday, McCain is to be buried in a private ceremony at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he graduated as a U.S. Navy officer in 1958 before going on to become a fighter pilot.
Ducey, a Republican, has said he will wait until after McCain's burial to name a successor.
His pick will come from McCain's party, leaving intact the Republican 51-49 majority in the Senate. It was unclear whether any successor would be inclined or able to play the role of public foil to Trump that McCain did, most notably in July 2017 when he cast the vote that blocked a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Arizona Republicans on Tuesday picked a candidate to succeed retiring Senator Jeff Flake, another vocal Trump critic. Their choice, U.S. Representative Martha McSally, is a staunch Trump supporter, as were her two rivals for the nomination. She will face Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the Nov. 6 general election.
The Phoenix memorial follows a few days of confusion at the White House over whether American flags at U.S. government buildings would be flown at half-staff, in the traditional gesture for prominent political figures following their deaths.
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Donald Trump rejected a statement prepared by his aides that praised John McCain, according to the Washington Post, underscoring the U.S. president's enduring scorn for the late senator and war hero.
While tributes have poured in highlighting the Arizona Republican's lifetime of service, Trump issued a single, terse tweet on Saturday that sent his "deepest sympathies and respect" to the bereaved family, without any words for McCain himself.
The absence of a formal communique from the White House has raised eyebrows and was all the more conspicuous after Vice President Mike Pence along with most of the cabinet, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and all the living former presidents had issued their own statements over the weekend.
Citing unnamed current and former White House aides, the Post said Sanders, Chief of Staff John Kelly and other senior staff had advocated for a statement that called McCain a "hero."
The statement was prepared and given to Trump for his approval, but according to the paper the president told aides he preferred to tweet instead, and it was ultimately not released.
McCain was one of Trump's sharpest critics, and made clear in one of his final wishes as he struggled with brain cancer that he did not want the president to attend his funeral.
The roots of their animosity go back to when Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in June 2015, suggesting that many Mexican immigrants were criminals and "rapists."
McCain denounced him for using language that "fired up the crazies," while Trump said McCain was a "dummy" who had barely managed to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy.
He went on to attack McCain's service in the military, saying of the onetime prisoner of war: "I like people that weren't captured."
As McCain's health ebbed, he missed few opportunities to lash out at the president. He was one of just three Republican senators to vote against -- and thus defeat -- a Trump-backed effort to repeal Barack Obama's signature health care law.
Following McCain's death, admirers have recalled with fondness his insistence on fair and civil discourse -- in contrast with the frequent incivility of the U.S. president and his habit of coining unflattering descriptions of political foes.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who ran unsuccessfully for president as a self-styled maverick Republican in 2008 and became a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, died on Saturday, his office said. He was 81.
McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona for over three decades, had been battling glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, discovered by his doctors in July 2017, and had not been at the U.S. Capitol in 2018. He also had surgery for an intestinal infection in April of this year.
His family had announced on Friday that McCain was discontinuing further cancer treatment.
A statement from his office said: "Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 p.m. on August 25, 2018. With the senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years."
No further details were immediately provided.
"My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years," Cindy McCain wrote on Twitter. "He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best."
Alternatively affable and cantankerous, McCain had been in the public eye since the 1960s, when as a naval aviator he was shot down during the Vietnam War and tortured by his North Vietnamese communist captors during 5-1/2 years as a prisoner.
He was edged out by George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, but became his party's White House candidate eight years later. After gambling on political neophyte Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, McCain lost in 2008 to Democrat Barack Obama, who became the first black U.S. president.
McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a frequent critic as well as a target of his fellow Republican, Trump, who was elected president in November 2016.
McCain denounced Trump for among other things his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders the senator described as foreign "tyrants."
"Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity," McCain said of Trump in his memoir, "The Restless Wave," which was released in May.
McCain in July had castigated Trump for his summit with Putin, issuing a statement that called their joint news conference in Helsinki "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory." He said Trump was "not only unable but unwilling to stand up to Putin."
Sources close to McCain have said Trump would not be invited to the funeral.
Shortly after McCain's death was announced, Trump tweeted: My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain."
McCain, a foreign policy hawk with a traditional Republican view of world affairs, was admired in both parties for championing civility and compromise during an era of acrid partisanship in U.S. politics. But he also had a famous temper and rarely shied away from a fight. He had several with Trump.
THUMBS DOWN
He was the central figure in one of the most dramatic moments in Congress of Trump's presidency when he returned to Washington shortly after his brain cancer diagnosis for a middle-of-the-night Senate vote in July 2017.
Still bearing a black eye and scar from surgery, McCain gave a thumbs-down signal in a vote to scuttle a Trump-backed bill that would have repealed the Obamacare healthcare law and increased the number of Americans without health insurance by millions.
Trump was furious about McCain's vote and frequently referred to it at rallies, but without mentioning McCain by name.
After Trump in 2015 launched his presidential campaign, McCain condemned his hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration and said Trump had "fired up the crazies." Trump retorted that McCain was "not a war hero," adding: "I like people who weren't captured."
After Trump became president, McCain blasted what he called the president's attempts to undermine the free press and rule of law, and lamented the "half-baked, spurious nationalism" of the Trump era.
McCain denounced Trump's performance at a summit meeting with Putin in July as "a tragic mistake," adding, "The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate."
MCCAIN VS OBAMA
McCain, the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982 after more than two decades of Navy service.
He served four years in the House before Arizona voters elected him to the Senate in 1986 to replace Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee revered by conservatives.
In running for president in 2008, McCain tried to succeed an unpopular fellow Republican in Bush, who was leaving office with the country mired in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and stuck in a financial crisis.
It was a stark contrast between McCain, then a 72-year-old veteran of the Washington establishment, and the 47-year-old Obama, who was offering a "Yes, we can" message of change.
McCain tried to inject some youth and enthusiasm into his campaign with his selection of Palin, Alaska's governor, as his running mate. But the choice backfired as her political inexperience and shaky performances in media interviews raised concerns about her qualifications.
In his new book, McCain voiced regret for not choosing then-Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, as his running mate.
McCain wrote that he had originally settled on Lieberman, Democrat Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 election, but was warned by Republican leaders that Lieberman's views on social issues, including support for abortion rights, would "fatally divide" the party.
"It was sound advice that I could reason for myself," McCain wrote. "But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had."
Obama won 53 percent of the vote to McCain's 45.6 percent.
WAR INJURIES
During the Vietnam War, McCain flew attack planes off aircraft carriers. He was preparing for a bombing run in 1967 when a missile inadvertently fired from another plane hit his fuel tanks, triggering a fatal explosion and fire. He suffered shrapnel wounds.
A few months later on Oct. 26, 1967, McCain's A-4 Skyhawk was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam's capital and he suffered two broken arms and a broken leg in the crash. A mob then dragged him from a lake, broke his shoulder and stabbed him.
Held at the notorious "Hanoi Hilton" prison and other sites, McCain was beaten and tortured, suffering broken bones and dysentery. He was released on March 14, 1973, but was left with permanent infirmities.
In Congress, McCain built a generally conservative record, opposing abortion and advocating higher defense spending. He supported Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq and criticized Obama for not doing more to intervene in Syria's civil war.
Still, he prided himself on his reputation as a maverick and had a history of working across party lines on immigration, climate change and campaign finance reform.
He also spoke out against the Bush administration's use of waterboarding, a torture technique that simulates drowning, and other harsh interrogation tactics on detainees in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
He urged the closure of the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and also sponsored an anti-torture measure that passed Congress in 2005.
In a 2002 memoir, McCain wrote, "I'm an independent-minded, well-informed public servant to some. And to others, I'm a self-styled, self-righteous maverick pain in the ass."
John Sidney McCain III was born on Aug. 29, 1936, at an American naval installation in the Panama Canal Zone - U.S. territory at the time - when his father was stationed there.
He conceded he was a "smart ass" during his years at the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated fifth from the bottom of his class.
McCain divorced his wife Carol after 15 years of marriage in 1980 and weeks later married the former Cindy Henley, daughter of a wealthy beer distributor in Arizona.
A dark period for McCain came as one of the "Keating Five" group of senators accused of improperly intervening with federal regulators to help political contributor and bank executive Charles Keating, whose Lincoln Savings and Loan failed in 1989 at a cost to taxpayers of $3.4 billion.
McCain was cleared of wrongdoing in 1991, but the Senate Ethics Committee rebuked him for poor judgment.
On July 25, 2017, McCain delivered a Senate floor speech not long after his cancer diagnosis that was widely seen as his farewell address. It included a call to fellow Republicans to stand up to Trump and for all lawmakers to work together to keep America as a "beacon of liberty" in the world.
"That is the cause that binds us and is so much more powerful and worthy than the small differences that divide us," McCain said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
