The New York Post mocked Meghan McCain as “The Meg” on its Sunday cover after she used the opportunity of her father’s funeral to attack President Trump.
“The Meg” is a reference to a plus-sized shark in the late-summer hit movie The Meg, starring Jason Staham.
The New York Post cover is just one part of a brewing backlash against McCain and the overall funeral service for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), which turned into an unseemly partisan rally Saturday with speakers like former Presidents Barack Obama and even George W. Bush trashing President Trump, who Sen. McCain refused to invite to his own funeral.
Also not invited was former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, John McCain’s unfailingly loyal 2008 vice presidential running mate.
What made Saturday’s shocking display all the more crass was that Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared were invited to the funeral and were forced to sit there and be humiliated, which might have been the plan. The McCains are infamous for holding petty grudges.
In an obvious shot at Trump, Meghan McCain used her eulogy to describe the death of her father as the passing of “American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”
For good measure, she added, “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”
Obama was also not subtle. He ripped into those who traffic in “bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage.”
“John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that,” he added, which struck many as a rose-colored look at man known for lashing out and who once attacked two Republican senators as “wacko birds” for daring to disagree with him.
Also, in an apparent fit of pique against Trump, one of McCain’s final acts as a U.S. Senator was to violate his longstanding and oft-repeated promise to voters to repeal ObamaCare.
Although McCain had repeatedly given his word over a number of years to repeal the unpopular boondoggle, when his was the deciding vote in July of 2017, before voting thumbs down, McCain reportedly said to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “Let’s see Donald make America great again now” — an obvious reference to the president.
McCain then went back on his pledge. His lone vote was the one that saved Obamcare, but he had his revenge.
For his part, Bush was only a tad more subtle. He described McCain as a man who “respected the dignity inherent in every life – a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators.”
According to the Associated Press, the audience, which was filled with media and political elites, even applauded as though this were a campaign rally, as opposed to a funeral for a legitimate war hero and long-term senator.
Many of those watching at home were disgusted by the politicization of a man’s death, and used social media to comment on the irony-filled and inappropriate spectacle of elites using a funeral service (of all places) to attack others over partisanship and a lack of decency. The applause was even worse.
On social media, the reaction was mostly one of shock and sadness at the lack of self-awareness, as opposed to the bitterness that emanated from the Washington National Cathedral:
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1035923137047613441
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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