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Up In Arms!

Published by digby on September 1, 2018

Up In Arms!

by digby



The right is very upset:

Meghan McCain and President Barack Obama took apparent swipes at President Trump on Saturday in a eulogy for John McCain — who sparred with Trump on a number of occasions before his death last week of brain cancer.

“The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great,’ McCain’s daughter said, in what appeared to be a reference to Trump’s presidential campaign slogan: “Make America Great Again.”

The remarks were made during a funeral service at Washington National Cathedral for the Arizona Republican, who died last week of brain cancer.

Obama’s jabs were more subtle but still appeared to be directed at the current occupant of the White House. He derided those in politics who traffic in “bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage.”

He also attacked “a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born of fear.”

“John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that,” he said.

It was Meghan McCain who had the most searing swipes at the president however. Notably she said that her father’s passing represented 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.”

Former President George W. Bush also paid tribute to McCain.

American service members in dress uniform carried Senator John McCain into the United States Capitol for the final time; chief congressional correspondent Mike Emanuel reports.
“John – as he was the first to tell you – was not a perfect man. But he dedicated his life to national ideals that are as perfect as men and women have yet conceived,” he said. “He was motivated by a vision of America carried ever forward, ever upward, on the strength of its principles.”

Yeah, Bush took a swipe at Trump too, Fox just ignored it:

“He was honorable, always recognizing that his opponents were still patriots and human beings. He loved freedom with the passion of a man who knew its absence. He respected the dignity inherent in every life, a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators.”

“Perhaps above all, John detested the abuse of power,” he added. “He could not abide bigots and swaggering. He spoke up for the little guy, forgotten people in forgotten places. One friend from naval academy days recalls John reacted to seeing an upperclassman verbally abuse a steward. Against all tradition, he told the jerk to pick on someone his own size. It was a familiar refrain during the six decades of service.”

Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit and his ilk are having a fit!

[i don’t know if he meant to say “heiled” but … yeah, probably.]

The fact that they are taking these comments as insults to Trump is very telling. They are all pretty anodyne references to a certain kind of iconoclastic American patriot type which, if Trump weren’t in the picture, would just be seen as a tribute to his “maverick” nature. It’s the context that makes them so pointed. The president of the United States is all those things “ptriots” used to hate but now they love.

Here are all the eulogies ICYMI:

Obama’s:

Bush’s:

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