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Meghan McCain gave the first remarks at a memorial service on Saturday honoring the life of her late father John McCain, who died of brain cancer on August 25. In an emotional eulogy delivered in Washington D.C.’s National Cathedral, Meghan lauded McCain as a “great man” and hit directly at President Donald Trump, who had previously mocked McCain’s reputation as a war hero.

“We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness,” Meghan said. “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.”

The comment refers to the four draft deferments that Trump used to avoid serving in the Vietnam War, as well as his popular “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. Meghan recalled the slogan later in the speech by saying, “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”

McCain, a two-time presidential candidate who served as Republican senator of Arizona from 1987 until his death, spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Trump had feuded publicly with McCain, and in 2015, he attacked his status as a decorated war hero, claiming, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

According to reports, McCain explicitly asked that the President not attend his funeral services, which spanned several days. Although Trump was not there, Saturday’s service included many members of Congress and former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who also eulogized McCain at the late senator’s request.

His memory has been honored by several other politicians, among them Hillary Clinton and Paul Ryan. In Washington, McCain’s life was commemorated by an elaborate memorial service that included a procession with a stop in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. On Saturday, his casket was escorted into the National Cathedral by military bearers.

Meghan has publicly spoken of her close-knit relationship to her father, and she recalled their moments together during her eulogy. She invoked both his leadership skills and family values, calling him an “exception.”

“We live in an era where we knock down old American heroes for all their imperfections. When no leader wants to admit to fault or failure,” she said. “You were an exception, and you gave us an ideal to strive for. Look, I know you can see this gathering here in this cathedral. The nation is here to remember you.”

Meghan McCain on Her Father: ‘I’m Scared of America Without Him’

John McCain’s Legacy of Being a “Maverick” Is Something We Should All Remember

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Saturday night brought the sad news that Republican senator and Vietnam war hero John McCain died after a battle with brain cancer. “Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 p.m. on August 25, 2018,” his office said in a statement that evening. It was just on Friday that McCain’s family revealed he was discontinuing treatment for the aggressive form of cancer.

There are no shortage of moments in McCain’s storied career that led him to be affectionately dubbed “The Maverick,” but it’s his lasting legacy as someone who wasn’t afraid to reach across party lines—a nonconformist as his nickname suggests—that his colleagues remarked on the most in his last days. One might not have always agreed with him, but you’d be hard-pressed not to respect him and, in many ways, the principles he chose to live by.

Yes, he is the man who chose Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election that eventually led to Barack Obama’s first term in office. But he is also the man who staunchly defended Obama when a woman at one of his rallies derided the former President, saying, “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, he’s not—he’s an Arab,” both an insult to his opposing candidate and those of Arab descent.

McCain quickly responded with grace: “No ma’am,” he said. “He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about. He is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as President. If I didn’t think I’d be one heck of a better President I wouldn’t be running, and that’s the point. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments; I will respect him. I want everyone to be respectful, and let’s make sure we are. Because that’s the way politics should be conducted in America.”

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During the past two years, McCain became a beacon of light to those, both conservative and liberal, who opposed President Donald Trump. Take for example, in June, when the president seemingly picked fights with a number of American allies at the G7 conference. McCain tweeted: “To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values. Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t.”

https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/1005614491768360960

Trump, himself, famously said in 2015 of the man who spent five-and-a-half years as a POW in Vietnam, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

McCain never shied away from criticizing the president and his administration. He was the lone Republican to vote against Mick Mulvaney, the president’s choice for budget chief. When Trump seemed to equate actions of the United States to those of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, McCain said, “That moral equivalency is a contradiction of everything the United States has ever stood for in the 20th and 21st centuries.”

He also warned that suppressing the press is “how dictators get started.”

Then there was his iconic “thumbs down” during the Senate’s Affordable Care Act vote back in July of 2017. In the days leading up to the vote, it was unclear whether McCain would side with his own party to pass the “skinny” repeal of one of President Obama’s signature pieces of legislation. In the end, he did not.

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“I’ve stated time and time again that one of the major failures of Obamacare was that it was rammed through Congress by Democrats on a strict party-line basis without a single Republican vote,” McCain said in a statement after the vote. “We must now return to the correct way of legislating and send the bill back to committee, hold hearings, receive input from both sides of aisle, heed the recommendations of nation’s governors, and produce a bill that finally delivers affordable health care for the American people,” he said. “We must do the hard work our citizens expect of us and deserve.”

He also called for a return to the regular legislative order that would allow proper debate on the issues. “I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us,” he said. “Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood.”

“Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. That’s an approach that’s been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side, with all the parliamentary maneuvers that requires.”

Of course, McCain was a Republican, and he voted along party lines more than he did not. But in a time when it feels like the country has never been more divided, and even those on the right in Congress who oppose what Trump stands for seem to do so only in tweets, we’d all do well to remember what a maverick truly is—and how one can make change for the better.

MORE: Meghan McCain Shares Emotional Tribute After Her Father’s Death: ‘Today the Warrior Enters His True and Eternal Life’

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