SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
How McCain Got the Last Word Against Trump (archive)
By the time he died on Saturday, Mr. McCain had carefully stage-managed a four-day celebration of his life — but what was also an unmistakable rebuke to President Trump and his agenda. For years, Mr. Trump had used Twitter and the presidential bully pulpit to mock and condemn the senator. In death, Mr. McCain found a way to have the last word, even quietly making it clear through friends that Mr. Trump was not welcome at the services.
“I think it’s fair to say that they have a very different view of this country and what this country means, here and abroad,” said Mark Salter, the senator’s longtime friend and co-author who sat with Mr. McCain — often with a lump in his throat — during the many discussions about his looming death. “His overall message was: ‘It doesn’t have to be this shitty.’”
The series of events honoring Mr. McCain is the kind of grandiose spectacle that is normally reserved for someone who became president, not someone who twice failed to do so. Friends said that Mr. McCain was surprised by the level of interest in his death even as he planned it.
When advisers suggested that his coffin should lie in state at the Arizona Capitol, Mr. McCain said he believed the legislature would never approve such a rare honor for him, recalled Rick Davis, who had been at Mr. McCain’s side for decades and served as his 2008 campaign chairman. “Every inch of the way, he underestimated what he thought this would be about,” Mr. Davis said.
The memorial events this week began in Arizona on Wednesday, when Mr. McCain’s body was taken to the Capitol, and will continue Thursday at a service at North Phoenix Baptist Church. The procession will then shift to the nation’s capital, when Mr. McCain’s coffin will arrive at an air base outside Washington as the president holds one of his raucous campaign-style rallies for supporters in Indiana.
By the weekend, when virtually all of official Washington — Democrats and Republicans alike — gathers at the National Cathedral for a nationally televised farewell, Mr. Trump is expected to have retreated to Camp David, where White House aides hope he will contain his anger at the attention being lavished on Mr. McCain.
[...] Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian activist who survived two poisoning attempts for his opposition to the government of President Vladimir V. Putin, said that Mr. McCain, who was widely seen as one of the Russian leader’s fiercest detractors, had also asked him in April to be a pallbearer. “He spoke the truth regardless of party or political situations,” Mr. Kara-Murza said. “That was his defining characteristic.”
In Washington, a town where Mr. Trump has given Mr. Putin an open invitation to visit, Mr. Kara-Murza said that Mr. McCain’s choice of a Russian pallbearer — one repeatedly brought to the brink of death for challenging his country’s authoritarian brand of politics — was “actually pretty symbolic.”
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday August 31 2018, @05:09AM (6 children)
A very apt question. In this story and a previous one [nytimes.com] on the Trump-McCain's Funeral friction, the people doing the hoping, complaining, etc. are shadowy nameless sources. Either invented persons with fictional views, or persons who comment anonymously as the "leakers" that the President seems to dislike so.
I can drive-by and jab with the best of them, but this is just a reaction--pointless or profound, as you like--to the perceived incongruity in the President's reactions to McCain's funeral, the total knowledge of which doesn't depend on nameless sources of the times.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday August 31 2018, @11:48AM (5 children)
What incongruity? You haven't quoted much that doesn't depend on nameless sources. All we know is that he isn't showing up to the funeral (perhaps because he allegedly has been excluded from the funeral) and may instead be hanging out at Camp David. Admittedly, that is a place he doesn't [washingtonpost.com] hang out at very much. But there just isn't much story there once you get past the nameless allegation - which is the "jab" I referred to.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday August 31 2018, @12:39PM (4 children)
The incongruity is in most people being at least semi-respectful in consideration of family and friends of the deceased vs. the Modern Presidental approach [nytimes.com].
Not in TFA--you're right. However, this realization doesn't rest on that unsourced jab (which is poor reporting and I would expect better of the Times). There is information from multiple sources documenting the President's reactions, especially his public reaction (great sources), but also his private ones (unidentified sources tell this reporter's friend's hairdresser on condition of anonymity).
The statement was admittedly not a riveting documentary of an event or condition as such, but provided me with a vantage point from which to view the situation, from which I didn't like what I saw.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 01 2018, @12:32AM (3 children)
What incongruity? You haven't described something that would indicate that Trump is being semi-disrespectful of the funeral.
What information would that be?
This is silly. You have yet to describe anything relevant to your beliefs. At best, we have some foot dragging [nytimes.com] on public displays of "respect". Oh dear, Trump procrastinated on publicly praising someone he disliked or possibly loathed and isn't showing up for the funeral. Big deal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 01 2018, @01:07AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday September 01 2018, @03:36AM (1 child)
I dunno, I think we're not doing too bad at communicating, even if not perfect.
The disagreement may be here. In my worldview, no one ever "should be seething" instead of respectful about people mourning a dead person that they cared about.
I have a time or two in the past been not especially unhappy to hear that people who positioned themselves as my enemies had passed on to the can't-do-more-harm-to-me area of the grave. But no amount of grief they caused me in life is cause for me to be "seething" instead of respectful of their parents/kids/spouses/friends/families mourning and marking their passing. That would have made me the problem, not them.
Basically, it boils down to this: If you, dear reader, believe you "should be seething" instead of respectful of the mourners of a person who recently died, you are the problem with the world, not the person you are "seething" because of.
If you're a nobody, this holds true.
If you're in a position or leadership or power, this holds a thousand times more.
If you're the President of the United States, then I hope you have been horribly maligned by the Times here, and are not the human defective the 'anonymous leakers' around you seem predisposed to suspect that you are.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 01 2018, @09:03AM