Two of John McCain‘s closest friends, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, defended Meghan McCain after she targeted President Donald Trump at the late senator’s funeral on Saturday, September 1.
Senator Graham spoke about The View cohost’s fiery speech at the service held in Washington D.C. during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, September 2.
“She’s a beautiful talented young lady; she is her father’s daughter,” the South Carolina Republican said. “If you say something about her dad you will know it, whether you’re the janitor or the president of the United States. She is grieving for the father she adored and I think most Americans understand that and I am just so proud of the young lady she has become. So I’m totally OK with everything.”
As previously reported, Meghan slammed the 72-year-old reality TV star at the National Cathedral, taking aim at Trump’s campaign slogan when she said, “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again, because America was always great.”
Meghan also took aim at the president’s multiple draft deferments that excused him from serving in Vietnam, where her father was captured and tortured as a prisoner of war, sustaining injuries that left him with lifelong physical disabilities.
“We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice, those that live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served,” she said.
Former Connecticut Senator Lieberman, an Independent, said during the CNN interview on Sunday that the former Navy aviator, who died on August 25 at the age of 81 after a battle with brain cancer, would have been proud of his daughter’s “direct” manner of speaking in her emotional eulogy.
“Yesterday, I was a very proud uncle,” he told Dana Bash. “Meghan is a daughter who had a very special, close relationship with her father, John McCain. So, he’s gone, he’s died, she’s grieving, and yet by the nature of his life, she’s called on to make a very public, global statement and appearance. Very hard. But she did it and she did it magnificently. She did it the way her dad would want her to do it, she was direct, the way John was.”
The former Apprentice host had a long-running feud with the two-time presidential hopeful, stating in 2015 that the senator from Arizona wasn’t a war hero because “I like people that weren’t captured.”
Trump was not invited to Saturday’s funeral, which was attended by former presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George W. Bush. The real estate mogul chose to instead spend the day golfing and tweeting about the Russian collusion investigation and NAFTA.
He did not tweet about the funeral but appeared to respond to Meghan’s speech on Saturday with a four-word tweet: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
