McCAIN’S DIGNIFIED MEMORIAL SERVICE: THE OPPOSITE OF OUR PRESIDENT’S ACTIONS

…John McCain’s motorcade leaving Phoenix, AZ.

Trump can’t stop lying, even during a dignified memorial service.

This week showed the sharp contrast between a highly dignified memorial service for the Arizona Senator, John McCain, which was fully broadcast live by cable news stations and online.  This was versus President Trump’s tirades on twitter as his motorcade made its way to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va.  (The same president that said he wasn’t going to spend his time in office playing golf.)

Trump’s bullying tweets just underscored the president’s unwillingness to embrace the traditional duties of office and his scorn of Washington’s protocols and conventions, which he delights in undermining.

Past presidents, both Republican and Democratic, dignitaries, friends and family gathered at the Washington National Cathedral to honor the Arizona Senator.

Our 45th president, who detested McCain, a fellow Republican, did not mention him in a series of morning missives on Twitter.  Trump has chafed all this week at the positive attention showered on McCain, as Trump wants to always be the one in the news.  McCain angered Trump last year by casting a crucial vote against a repeal of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. This week the president rejected an initial draft from aides of an official White House statement that called McCain a “hero”.  He also begrudgingly ordered the American flag atop the White House re-lowered to half-staff, after it had been raised to full staff following the minimum time required by law to recognize the death of a member of Congress.

McCain, knowing that he was near the end of his life, basically made the majority of the decisions about his funeral and who was to be asked to attend and who would be asked to speak.  He made it very clear that the president was not to be invited to attend and for sure not to speak, at the memorial service for McCain.  But he did ask the two men that beat him in two elections for president, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and they delivered two of the eulogies.

In fact, President Obama said that his was the way that John was getting back at him and George W. Bush, by asking them “to say nice things about John McCain at his funeral”.

But Trump’s lack of showing any dignity, also inspired him to once again offer to the American public another of his 100% falsehoods, or as we call them….another Trump lie.

In another pair of tweets Saturday to his 54 million followers, Trump promoted an article that came from CNSNews.com.  This is a conservative website, that suggested that a recent report from Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group, contained what appeared to be a bombshell revelation: “A U.S. surveillance court failed to hold any hearings when granting and renewing warrants to monitor the movements and communications of ex-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and 2017.”

The story was totally baseless.  That’s because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles warrants for surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists, normally does not hold hearings.

This court has 11 judges, all appointed by the Supreme Court’s chief justice, and they take rotating turns as the “duty judge” for several weeks at a time.  They review the written applications from the Justice Department and rarely hold hearings to consider them. The court’s proceedings are classified, so no lawyers or witnesses for the suspects are aware of any application for a warrant.

Meanwhile, at the Washington National Cathedral, Trump’s name went unmentioned by his two predecessors. But many of their remarks appeared aimed at presenting a contrasting worldview to the one that is centered on conspiracies, falsehoods and ill will that is continually offered by Trump.

“Even when we disagree, especially when we disagree, John believed in honest argument, in hearing other views,” Obama told the mourners, including McCain’s wife, Cindy, and his daughter Meghan. “He understood, too, that if we get in the habit of bending the truth . . . our democracy would not work.”

Obviously, that was a direct jab at Trump.

Trump spent over four hours at his Virginia golf club. Though White House aides did not provide details about his activities other than the golf, news photographers did publish photos of him golfing.

As the president departed the resort in mid-afternoon, his motorcade passed by a large number of protesters holding signs and flying small balloons depicting a replica of a baby Trump in diapers.  They were small replica balloons of the giant one that had first been flown in Great Britain.

One of the protest signs read: “You, Trump, are no John McCain” .

Hear, hear.

Copyright G.Ater  2018