Barack Obama to eulogize John McCain; Trump not invited to funeral

The longtime Arizona Republican senator, 81, who had been suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer, died Saturday at home in Arizona.

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Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush have been asked to deliver eulogies at Sen. John McCain‘s funeral, according to CBS News.

Details of the funeral are still being mapped out, but Donald Trump is not expected to be among the list of attendees or speakers. That’s hardly surprising. Who could forget when then-presidential candidate Trump infamously proclaimed that McCain, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, well, was not a hero because he was captured and imprisoned by member of the North Vietnamese Army?

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The comment sparked widespread condemnation, including from other Republicans, and  led McCain, among other reasons, to banish Trump from attending his funeral.

Still, Trump was among scores of well-wishers who took to social media this weekend to offer his “deepest sympathies and respect.”

The longtime Republican Arizona senator died at his home Saturday at the age of 81 after suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer, his office said in a statement, NBC News notes. His family announced Friday that he was discontinuing treatment.

Obama, who won the presidential bid against McCain in 2008, tweeted a statement Saturday that acknowledged their political differences and praised their common ground, saying, “But we shared, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher—the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed.”

Bush, who won the 2000 Republican presidential nomination against McCain, released a statement, calling his former opponent, “a man of deep deep conviction and a patriot of the highest order.”

Besides Obama, other Black lawmakers and civil rights leaders mourned the loss of the man, whose “no” vote last summer against his party’s efforts to repeal Obamacare dealt a fatal blow to Trump’s effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

“Today we not only lost a war hero and savvy politician but a man that always put true American values before himself,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

Calif. Sen. Kamala Harris, who is believed to be gearing up for a presidential run herself in 2020, remembered her colleague as a devoted family man.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker celebrated McCain’s legacy and love of America.

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