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US bids farewell to McCain

Obama condemns the “insult and phony controversies” of American politics, while daughter of his 2008 presidential rival is critical of president Trump

John Mc­Cain’s fu­neral in Wash­ing­ton yes­ter­day was marked by an ab­sence, that of the US pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump. No one men­tioned the name, but it was not nec­es­sary, as his fig­ure over­shad­owed the event in the na­tional cathe­dral of the fed­eral cap­i­tal.

The first to speak at the event at­tended by 2,500 peo­ple was Meghan Mc­Cain, the daugh­ter of the Ari­zona sen­a­tor, who died on Sat­ur­day of a brain tu­mour, who made an emo­tional ad­dress that in­cluded crit­i­cism of Trump. “We gather here to mourn the pass­ing of Amer­i­can great­ness,” she said. “The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sac­ri­fice he gave so will­ingly.” Her words were a clear ref­er­ence to Trump’s cam­paign slo­gan of Make Amer­ica Great Again, which her fa­ther re­jected, say­ing there was no need to make Amer­ica great again be­cause it has “al­ways been great.” Meghan Mc­Cain’s words were re­ceived with sur­prise from the at­ten­dees, who after a mo­ment by­passed fu­neral pro­to­col and ap­plauded.

How­ever, the most highly an­tic­i­pated speech, at least on so­cial media, was that of Trump’s pre­de­ces­sor in the White House, Barack Obama, who praised the man who was his rival in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 2008. Obama praised Mc­Cain’s po­lit­i­cal con­vic­tion, which led him to vote against the De­mo­c­rat pres­i­dent’s health re­form in 2017, against the ma­jor­ity po­si­tion of the Re­pub­li­can party, and that of Trump. “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 of fear.” The for­mer pres­i­dent’s words led to many eu­lo­gies on­line and from among po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors.

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