It looks like the time is nigh for John McCain.
Diagnosed with glioblastoma last year (a very aggressive form of brain cancer), McCain's health has been increasingly fragile. Hospitalized for surgery following an intestinal infection, McCain is now home in Arizona and putting his affairs in order.
It was reported that he sent for daughter Meghan and new son-in-law, Ben Domenech last week and told Ben to "take care" of his girl.
He's also asked Barack Obama to deliver a eulogy. As will George W. Bush.
But there's one person he'd rather not have at his funeral: Donald Trump.
McCain's wish for Trump to skip his funeral, first reported Saturday by The New York Times, comes as the two men have had a turbulent relationship, particularly since the 2016 presidential primary when Trump said McCain was considered a war hero only "because he was captured" during the Vietnam War and that Trump preferred military figures who avoided being taken prisoner by the enemy.
Last summer, Trump blasted McCain for his "no" vote that helped doom a key Obamacare repeal bill in the Senate.
When Axios reported Trump had been "physically mocking" McCain for the thumbs down gesture the senator indicated during his vote, McCain's daughter Meghan tweeted, "What more must my family be put through right now? This is abhorrent."
McCain has requested that Vice President Mike Pence fulfill the official White House duty to have someone present for a state funeral. And with Pence, there's far less chance of a speech that goes into the electoral college, poll numbers or Kanye West. Nor will he make any speech about himself, and if you can't be the star of your own funeral, when can you be?
And while my heart goes out to the McCain family in this time (having lost my own mother to an aggressive cancer in 2017, I know these final days are nothing but anguish on many levels), I can't help but wish that John McCain's legacy as a maverick would have translated into more standing up for the rule of law and against his own party's destruction of institutional norms over the last few years, instead of being the man who brought us Sarah Palin.
