John McCain Would Prefer VP Mike Pence Over President Donald Trump to Attend His Funeral
Senator John McCain does not want President Donald Trump in his eventual funeral.
According to a report by New York Times, the Arizona Republican requested that instead of the president, he would like Vice President Mike Pence to come instead.
McCain has been battling an aggressive form of brain cancer for nearly a year. While he is currently back home to recuperate following surgery last month for an intestinal infection, he expressed in an audio excerpt included in his upcoming memoir that he might not be around for much longer.
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Looking ahead, McCain has now set up his funeral service, and a big entry in the checklist is to make sure that Trump is nowhere near his final resting place. The request does not come as a surprise at all seeing as the two have clashed on several occasions in the past.
It all started during the 2016 presidential primary when Trump claimed that McCain was only deemed a war hero because he was captured during the Vietnam War. Trump went so far as to call McCain a "dummy" and a "loser" that time.
Then just last summer, Trump slammed McCain for his "no" vote that served as the final nail in the coffin for the Obamacare repeal that the president was pushing.
With what has been said about her father, McCain's daughter and "The View" co-host Meghan McCain probably wouldn't want Trump in the funeral anyway. She recently hit back at Trump for "physically mocking" her dad for the "no" vote issue.
She tweeted, "What more must my family be put through right now? This is abhorrent." In a recent tweet declaring her break from "The View" to be with her family, she expressed gratitude for the love and support sent their way.
"Thank you all again for your prayers, patience, understanding and compassion during this time. It means the world to me and my entire family," she wrote.
In recent panel discussion on his show "State of the Union," Jake Tapper described McCain's request for Trump to skip his funeral as "a real moment for the country" where an "American hero" simply expresses his mind even though it is about making sure a particular someone does not attend at his funeral.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, who was also part of the panel, said that he expects nothing less from McCain, who he described as "honest" and the "opposite of Donald Trump."
"He is not going to be a hypocrite. He does not believe that Donald Trump represents the kind of moral authority the president of the United States should represent for our country," he explained.
S.E. Cupp, a close friend of Meghan who took part in the same panel, describes McCain as "everything that President Trump is not."
She does not see the senator as a "sell-out," so she is not surprised that he does not want Trump at his funeral because having him eulogize or memorialize him will be "selling out."
The White House is yet to respond to McCain's request. What's known for now is that former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush are to serve as eulogists at the senator's funeral service, which will be held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
