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Meghan McCain, chatting with Stephen Colbert on Thursday night, didn’t waste time in expressing disdain for Donald Trump and his family, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, for the president’s treatment of her late father, Sen. John McCain.
But “The View” co-host also slammed Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner for showing up at her father’s funeral in September, even after she said the McCains had made it clear they didn’t want President Trump or anyone from his family there.
“I was surprised when they were there, and it made me uncomfortable, and I hope I made them uncomfortable, honestly, with everything,” McCain said forthrightly.
Colbert opened his interview with McCain on “The Late Show” by expressing condolences for her father’s death from brain cancer in August at age 81. Colbert then asked McCain to elaborate on a passage from the eulogy she gave at his funeral at the Washington National Cathedral.
“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,” Colbert read from McCain’s passionate eulogy, which she delivered to an elite crowd of national and world leaders.
Such passages from her eulogy, and those delivered by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, were seen as pushbacks against Trump’s divisive style of leadership.
Colbert asked McCain if she was aware that Trump’s daughter and son-in-law were at the service.
McCain explained that she wrote her eulogy “in real time,” as her father, a longtime Republican senator from Arizona, was battling cancer. She didn’t think about who would be attending his funeral when she wrote it, and she didn’t know in advance that Ivanka Trump and Kushner would be there.
The McCains said they didn’t want the Trumps at the service because Donald Trump often disparaged John McCain, a decorated Navy war hero who survived nearly six years of captivity during the Vietnam War. As a presidential candidate, Trump — who never served in the military — infamously said that McCain “was not a war hero” because he was captured.
Meghan McCain, a steadfast conservative like her father who opposes Trump’s presidency, told Colbert: “I thought that my family made it clear — or at least I had — that the Trumps were unwelcomed around me and my father. (I) had sort of been very clear about the line between the McCains and the Trumps.”
At the time, news commentators and people on Twitter expressed disbelief and anger that Ivanka Trump and Kushner, senior White House advisers, showed up. According to New York Times reporter Katie Rogers, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham invited Ivanka Trump to attend, saying it would be “a nice gesture” for someone from the Trump family to pay their respects.
Graham then cleared their attendance with McCain’s wife, Cindy, Rogers said. But many tweeted that Graham’s request of a grieving Cindy McCain, and Ivanka Trump’s decision to attend, lacked class and was “inappropriate.”
Tone deaf and disrespectful as usual.
The lack of class in this family is stunning— christine kling (@christineckling) September 1, 2018
Meghan McCain no doubt agreed, telling Colbert: “I really want it made very clear that the Trumps have beef with me then and in the words of Cardi B, they’re gonna have beef with me forever and I’m not going to forget.”
In addition to mocking John McCain for being a POW, Trump continued to criticize his GOP rival even after his death. Just this week, Trump reportedly disparaged McCain during a luncheon with TV news anchors before his State of the Union speech. According to Fox News, Trump said McCain’s final book, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights and Other Appreciations,” had “bombed.”
In fact, McCain’s 2018 book was a New York Times bestseller, Fox News said. After hearing about Trump’s comments, Meghan McCain took to Twitter to hit back at the president:
The president’s obsession with my father 6 months after his death is pathetic and telling – even at a time when he should be focusing on his message to the American public and the state of our union – the greatness of my father’s life and legacy haunts you. https://t.co/JLgHoZwCKD
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) February 6, 2019
