The memorial service on Saturday at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) included wide-ranging criticism of President Donald Trump, though he was not named, inspiring the left-wing media to describe the event as the “biggest Resistance meeting yet.”
That wording was used in the headline for a column in the New Yorker published on Saturday about the service that praised those who slammed the president and implied the gathering was filled with people who are determined to resist the agenda Trump was elected by the American people to advance:
Donald Trump’s name was never mentioned. It didn’t have to be. The funeral service for John Sidney McCain III, at the Washington National Cathedral, on this swampy Saturday morning, was all about a rebuke to the pointedly uninvited current President of the United States, which was exactly how McCain had planned it.
New Yorker columnist Susan Glasser noted the obligatory tributes to McCain’s “bravery, courage and public service” and his time as a prisoner of war.
The column continued:
But McCain knew that would not be the headline from the grand service, whose many details he personally oversaw. This was to be no mere laying to rest of a Washington wise man, nor just another funeral of an elder statesman whose passing would be marked by flowery words about the end of an era. It was a meeting of the Resistance, under vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows.
Glasser praised McCain’s daughter, Meghan, for mocking Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.
“The America of John McCain does not need to be made great again, because it is already great,” McCain said.
Glasser said McCain’s eulogy was “remarkable” and then went on to cite a critical White House pool report about Trump’s tweets and mocked his wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and golf-playing.
Glasser wrote about McCain planning his memorial, including his exclusion of Trump and requests that former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush speak.
Glasser wrote:
When Bush talked about McCain’s dedication to America’s leadership in the world and his hatred of tyrants, how many of those listening thought of the current President’s praise for many of those same dictators whom McCain had been so proud to oppose? Of course, they thought of it. That was the point.
Glasser praised Obama’s jabs at Trump, too, oblivious to the irony that while he and others were praising McCain and his civility, they were being blatantly disrespectful to the sitting President of the United States.
“The city is much more bipartisan, in some respects, than it has ever been, more united than it may currently seem, in its hatred of Donald Trump,” Glasser wrote and then named all of those associated with the president who attended the memorial, including his daughter and son-in-law, as another way to rebuff Trump’s presidency.
National Public Radio (NPR) also joined the McCain resistance-themed memorial in its reporting.
NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday host, Melissa Block, introduced the report by saying, “It’s been a weekend of remembering old Washington — a place of principled disagreement, honesty and respect. At least that’s the romantic myth and at John McCain’s funeral yesterday that was also the reality.”
Reporter Mara Liasson repeated the “resistance” label by the left-wing media in covering McCain’s memorial service.
“One writer said the gathering at the cathedral was a giant meeting of the resistance,” Liasson said.
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