Recently, long serving Republican U.S. Senator John McCain died the year after facing a diagnosis of brain cancer. This Thursday, a whole host of people gathered to honor him in Arizona, which he represented in Congress for decades. Among those who spoke was former Vice President Joe Biden, the most recent to serve before the present administration. He didn’t explicitly call out the Trump team by name, but he certainly did include rebukes of the administration’s policies and methods.
Biden, who’d been friends with McCain for decades and served alongside him in the Senate, explained at one point:
‘It wasn’t about politics with John. He could disagree on substance, but it was the underlying values that animated everything John did, everything he was. You could come to a different conclusion, but where he’d part company with you is if you lacked the basic values of decency, respect — knowing that this project is bigger than yourself.’
Biden paused before adding the final phrase, perhaps conscious of the current president’s preferred focus on, quite simply, himself. Trump has proven in recent days to be more concerned with what comes back when you Google his name — no joke — than a host of other issues.
McCain explicitly countered Trump time and time again when he was still alive. For instance, he strongly rebuked Trump opting to put his personal feelings about Russian President Vladimir Putin above the facts of the Kremlin leader’s relationship with the world. He called conciliatory comments Trump offered while standing next to Putin after a joint summit in Finland “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”
At the time — which was just last month, in July — the deceased Senator added:
‘The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.’
Biden referenced — again without mentioning Trump by name — the contrast between the president and McCain’s ways of doing business in further Thursday remarks.
He added:
‘John’s story is the American story. That’s not hyperbole. It’s the American story — grounded in respect and decency, basic fairness, the intolerance of the abuse of power. Many of you have traveled the world. Look how the rest of the world until recently looks at us. They look at us a little naive. We are so fair. We’re so decent. We’re the naive Americans. But that’s who we are. That’s who John was.’
Watch below.
There are hardly many other developments outside of Trump’s ascent to the presidency warranting Biden’s note that the United States’ position as a perhaps naive defender of decency was solid “until recently.” The former vice president has countered Trump time and time again, himself expressing alarm over Trump’s behavior towards Putin just as McCain did.
Trump has not been invited to memorial services honoring the fallen Senator; in his place, former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush will be delivering eulogies at a service to be held this Saturday at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. This isn’t even the first time that Trump has skipped a notable public figure’s funeral — he didn’t go to Barbara Bush’s either. He just keeps digging his isolating metaphorical hole bigger and bigger.
Featured Image via Screenshot from the Video
