These are clearly the waning days for Arizona Sen. John McCain, the genuine war hero who became a Senator and has been battling a brutal form of brain cancer. The New York Times has a particularly poignant report about McCain, at his ranch in Arizona, beginning what is clearly a good-bye, meeting friends to share memories and regrets. One was picking former Alaska Sen. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in his ill-fated fun in 2004.
But the big news, reported by the New York Times last weekend and now confirmed by NBC News is that McCain does not want Donald Trump at his funeral, where former Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush will deliver eulogies. NBC reports that the White House has been told of McCain’s wish.
People close to Sen. John McCain have told the White House that the ailing Arizona Republican does not want President Donald Trump to attend his funeral and would like Vice President Mike Pence to come instead, a source close to McCain confirmed to NBC News.
….The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
Trump did not attend the recent funeral of former first lady Barbara Bush in Houston, Texas, in order “to avoid disruptions due to added security, and out of respect for the Bush Family and friends attending the service,” the White House said last month. First lady Melania Trump attended the service instead, along with former Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and former first lady Hillary Clinton.
Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush plan to be eulogists at McCain’s funeral service, which is to be held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the source close to McCain said.
McCain’s wish for Trump to skip his funeral, first reported Saturday by The New York Times, comes as the two men have had a turbulent relationship, particularly since the 2016 presidential primary when Trump said McCain was considered a war hero only “because he was captured” during the Vietnam War and that Trump preferred military figures who avoided being taken prisoner by the enemy.
Last summer, Trump blasted McCain for his “no” vote that helped doom a key Obamacare repeal bill in the Senate.
When Axios reported Trump had been “physically mocking” McCain for the thumbs down gesture the senator indicated during his vote, McCain’s daughter Meghan tweeted, “What more must my family be put through right now? This is abhorrent.”
The bottom line is that Trump has been shattering the kinds of norms that McCain observed and defended all his life. Trump skipping the funerals of TWO important national figures will underscore how isolated he is from the rest of America’s political history. It’s a cliche but, no, the “new normal” is never really “normal.” What America is witnessing now is McCain not just battling Trump to his dying breath but making sure even when he is gone there he can land one more blow. History will note Trump’s being persona non grata two key Republican families.
Meanwhile, McCain’s views on Trump and his conclusion that picking Palin was a mistake will get high profile exposure in coming months. The Times:
It was also at his Hidden Valley Ranch where the senator participated in a nearly two-hour HBO documentary and co-wrote what he acknowledges will be his last book, “The Restless Wave,” both of which are set to be released this month.
The film and the book, a copy of which The New York Times obtained independently of Mr. McCain, amount to the senator’s final say on his career and a concluding argument for a brand of pro-free trade and pro-immigration Republicanism that, along with his calls for preserving the American-led international order, have grown out of fashion under President Trump.
In the book, Mr. McCain scorns Mr. Trump’s seeming admiration for autocrats and disdain for refugees.
“He seems uninterested in the moral character of world leaders and their regimes,” he writes of the president. “The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values. Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity.”
Yet many in Mr. McCain’s own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party.
While he continues to defend Ms. Palin’s performance, Mr. McCain uses the documentary and the book to unburden himself about not selecting Mr. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, as his running mate.
He recalls that his advisers warned him that picking a vice-presidential candidate who caucused with Democrats and supported abortion rights would divide Republicans and doom his chances.
“It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” he writes. “But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had.”
Even more striking is how Mr. McCain expresses his sorrow in the documentary. He calls the decision not to pick Mr. Lieberman “another mistake that I made” in his political career, a self-indictment that includes his involvement in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal and his reluctance to speak out during his 2000 presidential bid about the Confederate battle flag flying above the South Carolina Capitol.
Now on Twitter the questions are:
Will Trump to attack McCain due to the news that McCain wants a Trump-free funeral? And will Trumpistas begin blasting McCain, his family and his brand of Republicanism?
Indeed, McCain’s (and the Bush family’s) brand of Republicanism also seems to be in the final chapter of its life.
John McCain Of Donald Trump: “He seems uninterested in the moral character of world leaders and their regimes. The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values. Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity.”
— Mia Farrow (@MiaFarrow) May 5, 2018
photo credit: Gage Skidmore John McCain & Jeff Flake via photopin (license)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.