Miss New York Nia Imani Franklin wins Miss America pageant
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Miss New York Nia Imani Franklin was named Miss America 2019 in Atlantic City.
Her victory Sunday night resurrected a string of successes the Empire State has had in the pageant in recent years. Mallory Hagan, Nina Davuluri and Kira Kazantsev won the title from 2013 to 2015 competing as Miss New York.
A classical vocalist whose pageant platform is “advocating for the arts,” Franklin sang an operatic selection from the opera La Boheme on Sunday night.
She wrote her first song at age 6. It went “Love, love, love, love, is the only thing that matters to me, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.”
She won a $50,000 scholarship along with the crown in the first Miss America pageant to be held without a swimsuit competition.
Franklin said during her onstage interview that she was one of only a small number of minority students in school growing up, but used her love for music and the arts to grow and fit in.
The fourth runner up was Miss Massachusetts Gabriela Taveras; third runner up was Miss Florida Taylor Tyson; second runner up was Miss Louisiana Holli’ Conway, and the first runner up was Miss Connecticut Bridget Oei.
The judges narrowed the field of 51 candidates during the pageant Sunday night from Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall.
The decision to drop the swimsuit competition created a good deal of controversy and criticism of current Miss America leadership. Minutes before the nationally televised broadcast began, a comedian warming up the crowd mentioned that there would be no swimsuit competition this year, and was met with loud boos in the hall.
The swimsuits have been replaced by onstage interviews, which have generated attention-grabbing remarks from contestants regarding President Trump, and NFL player protests, among other topics.
In her onstage interview Sunday, Miss Massachusetts Gabriela Taveras said people should put their social media devices down for a while.
“We’re starting to look at people as Democrat or Republican, black or white. We’re not just one kind of people. We are a multi-faceted people.”
Behind the scenes, a revolt is underway among most of the Miss America state organizations who demand that national chairwoman Gretchen Carlson and CEO Regina Hopper resign.
The outgoing Miss America, Cara Mund, says the two have bullied and silenced her, claims that the women deny.
Upon taking over at the helm of the Miss America Organization last winter following an email scandal in which former top leaders denigrated the appearance, intellect and sex lives of former Miss Americas, Carlson and Hopper set out to transform the organization, dubbing it “Miss America 2.0.”
The most consequential decision was to drop the swimsuit competition and give the candidates more time to talk onstage about themselves, their platforms and how they would do the job of Miss America. Supporters welcomed it as a long-overdue attempt to make Miss America more relevant to contemporary society, while others mourn the loss of what they consider an integral part of what made Miss America an enduring part of Americana.
Unhappy with how the decision was reached, as well as with other aspects of Carlson and Hopper’s performance, 46 of the 51 state pageant organizations (the District of Columbia is included) have called on the two to resign.
Adding to the intrigue was a remarkable letter released by Mund, the outgoing Miss America, who said Carlson and Hopper had bullied, silenced and marginalized her. They deny doing any of that, saying they have been working tirelessly to move the organization into the future.
Mund only appeared at the very end of the pageant before the next winner was crowned. She was not allowed to speak live; instead a 30-second taped segment of her speaking was broadcast.
Mother of all tantrums – Serena Williams wrecks another bid to change her angry image
By Will Swanton (The Australian).
An advertisement on auto-loop during American television coverage of the US Open featured Serena Williams as a mature and fiercely determined mother, kissing her toddler daughter goodbye before walking on to a tennis court and declaring to her rivals in a calm yet threatening manner, “I’m gonna knock you out. Mamma said knock you out.”
The lyrics from rapper LL Cool J’s 1990 song are used in the Chase Bank ad to push the new image of Williams as a firebrand transformed into a wise old soul now there’s a baby on board. Every media outlet has given blanket coverage to Williams’s attempt to win her first major championship since the birth of Alexis in September last year. And every storyline carried the same theme: The mother of all victories is upon us.
When the moment arrives, she’s nearly hyperventilating as she steps on to the Arthur Ashe Stadium court for the US Open final. She can equal Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24 major wins if she beats the quietly spoken, and visibly trembling, Naomi Osaka from Japan. All the scripts have been written; all the public-relations lines have been spun. But then mamma knocks herself out with hysterical behaviour and illogical complaints.
She loses 6-2 6-4, Osaka is the first Japanese player to win a major. Williams’s ego-driven behaviour is compounded by a feral crowd behaving like they’re on the set of The Jerry Springer Show. It’s been terrible from them. Terrible from Williams. And terrible from Katrina Adams, the boss of the US Tennis Association.
The New York Post reports: “It’s hard to recall a more unsportsmanlike event. Here was a young girl who pulled off one of the greatest upsets ever, who fought for every point she earned, ashamed. At the awards ceremony, Osaka covered her face with her black visor and cried. The crowd booed her. Katrina Adams … opened the awards ceremony by denigrating the winner and lionising Williams — whose ego, if anything, needs piercing. ‘Perhaps it’s not the finish we were looking for today,’ Adams said. ‘But Serena, you are a champion of all champions.’
“Addressing the crowd, Adams added, ‘This mamma is a role model and respected by all.’ That’s not likely the case now … ”
No one doubts Williams’s passion for women’s rights and the seriousness of the racism she’s encountered in her life. But neither is relevant here. She’s been playing a tennis match, and that is all. She’s been losing the contest when she’s lost the plot. That’s important. Her meltdown may be a shock to the casual observer but those who have watched tennis over the years have seen this before from her. On the same court. At the same tournament. The same discombobulations, if not worse.
Against Belgium’s Kim Clijsters in the 2009 semi-finals, she’s blown a gasket after being called for a foot-fault at 4-6, 5-6, 15-30. It’s on her second serve, which means she faces match point. She waves her racquet at the female line judge and says, “I swear to God, I’m f. king going to take this f. king ball and shove it down your f. king throat, you hear that? I swear to God.” The lineswoman walks to the umpire, Louise Engzell, and tells her what has been said. (Williams has already received a code violation for smashing a racquet. A second violation equals a penalty point. A third violation, a penalty game. A fourth violation, the match.) Because it’s match point against Clijsters, that’s all she wrote. Clijsters wins. The tournament director arrives on the court. In their three-way discussion, Williams tells the lineswoman, “I never said I would kill you! Are you serious? I never said that!” Two days later, Clijsters beat Caroline Wozniacki to become the first mother to win the US Open.
In the 2011 final against Australia’s Sam Stosur, Williams has been billed as the all-American heroine who will win the national championship on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The hype, then and now, has been too much for her. She descends into gamesmanship at best, or outright cheating at worst, by yelling “Come on!” as Stosur is attempting to hit a groundstroke. The female umpire, Eva Asderaki, correctly awards the point to Stosur. A petulant Williams tells Asderaki, “I am not giving her the game. You’re nobody. You’re ugly on the inside.” At the next change of ends, she shouts at the umpire: “You’re totally out of control. You’re a hater and unattractive inside. What a loser.” Williams is thrashed 6-2 6-3 before Stosur says in her laid-back Australian drawl: “Serena did something you can’t do.”
Williams has done against Osaka what she’s often done in New York. Lost all rational thought. Thrown the toys out of the cot. It makes a mockery of the Chase Bank ad and suggestions that she’s grown some sort of halo since bringing her daughter into the world. That whole marketing campaign has now crashed and burned. Again, no one doubts Williams has fought like a lioness to go from the violent streets of Compton, Los Angeles, to the top of world sport. Her passion for women’s rights is genuine. Her pride in her young family is real.
If she hasn’t changed her on-court behaviour one bit since putting the mother into the hood, that is no bad thing. But looking up at the umpire’s chair in NYC, she’s been barking up the wrong tree. She’s been the victim of nothing. Things have escalated because of her and no one else. Umpire Carlos Ramos has followed the rules to the letter. With the match spiralling out of control in direct correlation with her emotions, she’s forgotten the law of holes — when you’re digging yourself one, stop bloody digging.
It’s a three-stage unravelling.
Stage one: Mamma has lost the first set. At 1-1 in the second set, she receives a warning about courtside coaching. Her mentor, Patrick Mouratoglou, has made hand gestures that encourage Williams to get to the net more often. (Mouratoglou later admits to “100 per cent coaching”.)
Both the coaching and the warning are common occurrences on tour. Mentors motion to their players or use coded signals — if I scratch my left ear, serve to his backhand. Some of them freely talk to their players. It’s often ignored by umpires, but when it is cautioned, there’s rarely drama. The normal response is for players to shrug and play on while the coaches sit on their hands for the rest of a match. When Ramos announces the warning, Williams tells the umpire her coach has given her a thumbs up and that it’s no secret code. “I know you don’t know that and I understand why you thought that was coaching, but I’m telling you it’s not. I don’t cheat to win. I’d rather lose. I’m just letting you know.” It’s been an emotional but relatively unremarkable dialogue. More to come.
Stage two: Leading 3-2 in the second set, Williams is docked a point for her second code violation. She smashes a racquet on the court. It’s a little difficult for her to argue with this one. Destroying a racquet is an automatic violation on tour. “This is unbelievable,” she tells Ramos before rambling about the previous transgression. “Every time I play here I have problems. What? That’s a warning? I didn’t get coaching. I didn’t get coaching. You need to make an announcement that I didn’t get coaching. I don’t cheat. I didn’t get coaching. How can you say that? You need to … you owe me an apology. You owe me an apology. I have never cheated in my life. I have a daughter and I stand for what’s right for her and I never cheated. You owe me an apology. You will never do another one of my matches!”
Stage three: At 3-4, Williams tells Ramos from her courtside chair at a change of ends: “For you to attack my character, it’s wrong. You’re attacking my character. Yes, you are. You owe me an apology. You will never, ever, ever be on another court of mine as long as you live. You are the liar. When are you going to give me my apology? You owe me an apology. Say it. Say you’re sorry.”
No apology. Williams says: “Well, then, don’t talk to me. Don’t talk to me. You stole a point from me. You’re a thief, too.”
Ramos decides to talk. “Code violation,” he says from his microphone. “Verbal abuse. Game penalty, Mrs Williams.”
She’s gone from 3-4 to 3-5. She’s one game from losing the match. With the crowd cheering for her, Williams says: “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Because I said you’re a thief? Because you stole a point from me. But I’m not a cheater. But I told you to apologise for me. This is out. Excuse me, I need the referee.”
While Osaka — another woman, it has to be said — is doing her best to stay calm in the most important moments of her career, tournament referee Brian Earley and WTA supervisor Donna Kelso arrive on the court. Williams tells Earley: “Because I’m a woman, you’re going to take this away for me? You know how many other men do things that are much worse than that. This is not fair. There’s a lot of men out here who have said a lot of things, and because they are men, that doesn’t happen to them.” Williams is told that she knew she risked a game penalty by berating Ramos, after two earlier violations. “No, I don’t know the risk because if I say a simple thing — a thief because he stole a point from me — that does not make … there are men out here that do a lot worse,” she says.
“You know it, and I know you can’t admit it, but I know you know it’s not right. I know you can’t change it but I’m just saying that’s not right. I get the rules but I’m just saying it’s not right. And it’s happened to me at this tournament every single year that I’ve played here. That’s just not fair. It’s all I have to say. It’s not fair.”
Osaka wins. Williams refuses to shake Ramos’s hand. The crowd turns shamefully ugly by booing Osaka as she steps up to accept the trophy.
William’s has broken three rules of tennis and been called out on all of them. None of them concerned equal rights at a tournament that provides equal pay for men and women. You cannot receive courtside coaching. If every other player and coach do it, it’s still no excuse. The smashed racquet speaks for its poor, busted self. You cannot accuse an umpire of stealing a point. You’re calling him a cheat.
“I’m here fighting for women’s rights and for women’s equality and for all kinds of stuff,” Williams says in her post-match interview, still digging. “For me to say thief and for him take a game, it made me feel like it was a sexist remark. I’m going to continue to fight for women.”
Which is an admirable thing to do in areas of relevance. On this occasion, she’s been playing sport against another woman. It’s not possible to have a more level playing field. She’s been throwing punches in the wrong direction.
Mamma has KO’d no one but herself. Williams has received what she deserved … and so has Osaka.
The boos and jeers have stopped, but she still has the trophy. And her reputation.
————————————————————————————
Cross court shots
1981
John McEnroe’s legendary repeated cry of “You cannot be serious” starts with a line call from umpire Edward “the absolute pit of the world” James. McEnroe was fined $US1500 but went on to win at Wimbledon.
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1990
In the fourth round of the Australian Open, McEnroe becomes the first player since 1963 to be disqualified from a Grand Slam for misconduct. After receiving code violations for glaring at a lineswoman and smashing racquets, McEnroe argued with Grand Slam chief supervisor Ken Farrar, prompting umpire Gerry Armstrong to rule: “Default, Mr McEnroe. Game, set, match.”
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1995
Britain Tim Henman becomes the first player to be disqualified from Wimbledon in the open era. He angrily tried to smash a ball into the net after missing a shot but hit a ballgirl in the ear. Henman’s doubles partner Jeremy Bates was also disqualified.
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2012
Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis smashes four racquets after Stanislas Wawrinka jumps to a two-set lead at the Australian Open.
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2018
Australian Nick Kyrgios is fined $23,500 for imitating a lewd act with a water bottle during his loss to Marin Cilic at the Queen’s Club in London in June.
♦ Culled from The Australian. (Author Will Swanton).
How one African man’s gold scheme cost his American victims millions of dollars
There’s nothing quite like seeing $100 million worth of gold with your own eyes — heaven may be the closest thing.
That’s the blunt concession of an Atlanta businessman who fell for one of the most sophisticated — and most convincing — scams U.S. law enforcement has ever seen, allegedly made possible with the help of corrupt government officials in Africa.
“I challenge anybody that would have been there, I don’t care who you are, what walks of life you came from, I challenge you to go and see and do the things that we’ve done, and not” fall for it, the 62-year-old businessman told ABC News under the condition that he not be identified by name.
The man behind the scam, Liberian native Cassell Kuoh, is now living in a U.S. federal prison near Charlotte, North Carolina, after pleading guilty to fraud charges and opening up to authorities about his wide-ranging scheme.
“When I heard the dollar amounts that were involved I was shocked. I was literally shocked,” said Chris Healy, the assistant special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Charlotte, which investigated the case. “Not $1, $2, $3 or $4 [million]. We’re talking anywhere $25 to $30 million.”
For the Atlanta businessman, this international caper started three years ago, when he received a call from an associate telling him about a miner in Liberia named Cassell Kuoh, who by all accounts was a Liberian success story.
He founded one of Liberia’s preeminent soccer teams; he was a philanthropist in his impoverished community, and — the businessman was told — Kuoh was a mine operator with a warehouse full of gold and diamonds, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
He was described as “a Liberian up-and-coming businessman that could be trusted to do transactions … and they actually called me to see if I wanted to invest,” the Atlanta man recalled to ABC News.
He wanted to be a part of it all, but first he had to know if it was the real deal — was Kuoh truly as he was being billed?
So the Atlanta man emailed with Kuoh, he researched Kuoh, he met Kuoh in New York City and tested the miner’s product, and then he flew to Liberia.
While in Liberia, the Atlanta man visited Kuoh’s mining site, he visited with officials of the Liberian government, he went to Kuoh’s home and met his family, and he went to Kuoh’s office — an episode that the Atlanta man captured on his cellphone.
“For all the non-believers that the product is real, you can actually see now, here’s 400 kilograms [nearly 900 pounds] of gold,” the Atlanta man can be heard saying as he shows Kuoh opening up seven white sacks filled with gold. Piled next to the sacks of gold were nearly two dozen gold bars.
“These are just some of the products,” Kuoh told ABC News. “There are more of them that we have.”
Kuoh had produced the same show for so many others — using even more theatrics. In some cases, bullet-proof vans guarded by armed men would drop off the gold.
“What they see is unbelievable. The set-up is very big,” Kuoh said.
Those who traveled thousands of miles to see the gold also got to test the gold however they liked.
All the clients had to do — they were told — is pay for any costs, certifications and taxes needed to export the gold out of Africa. Then they can sell the gold and split the profits.
According to Kuoh, people from all over the world jumped in, including investors from the United States, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
But Kuoh acknowledged that he had a secret.
“The gold is not my gold. The gold is the government’s gold,” he said.
His family’s mine produced little gold or diamonds. So, Kuoh told ABC News, he paid Liberian government officials to let him use ministry gold as a prop for the day.
“I don’t have 500 kilos [about 1,100 pounds]!” he declared. “But the government has tons of gold. So if this person needs to see 200 kilos [nearly 450 pounds], we get the 200 kilos.”
Sometimes, Kuoh would take the show on the road to other African countries and pay government officials or gold refinery operators there to help make it happen.
“Everywhere in Africa they have the same set-up,” he said. “You just need to go to one of the groups and deal with them, and you talk percentage.”
As Homeland Security Investigations official Patrick Healy put it, Kuoh “had hooks within governments and these government agencies, and some of the money that Kuoh derived from some of these victims was to pay off these government officials.”
Cassell also set up a fake website, so clients could track their shipments. The website was constantly being updated with new stories, new unforeseen hitches and new reasons that clients needed to pay just a little more to keep the shipment coming.
“If you know a thing about customs, a lot of things get stuck in customs, cars, all kinds of commodities, always, it’s not something that is not normal … I had no reason, in my own mind, not to believe it,” the Atlanta businessman told ABC News.
But “the truth of the matter,” Kuoh said, was “there is no package.”
“We just keep giving you another story, keep giving you documents. We’ve been shipping the gold for 10 years, [but] you can’t get it,” he said.
It was a vicious cycle.
“You’re so deep in, you’ve got to get out somehow okay. … We needed to raise funds,” the Atlanta businessman man said. “That’s when I borrowed money and brought in some other close friends and relatives.”
Meanwhile, Cassell was becoming a rich man, buying expensive cars, traveling the world, and living a life of luxury.
He even used cash to buy a house in Charlotte for his wife and kids – perched on Happiness Road, right off Perseverance Drive (really).
“He was enjoying life in America,” noted Jill Rose, who oversaw the prosecution of Kuoh as U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. She is now serving the Justice Department overseas.
For a long time, Cassell thought he would never get caught and that he would be protected by the top-level Liberian government officials involved in his criminal conspiracy.
“No one was going to touch me,” Kuoh said. “And trust me, no one could have touched me when I was going to be in Africa.”
He was beloved by the impoverished Liberians around him for the real things he did.
“He wanted to take care some of his people,” the Atlanta businessman said. “I think he donated regularly lots of money to his church. And I know for a fact he fed a lot of people in the city and, you know, we would stop and would buy fish for the children.”
According to Kuoh, he helped send several children in his community to school and he used some of ill-gotten gains to place 24 hand pumps in his village for safe drinking water.
The Atlanta business said that’s one of the things that first attracted him to Kuoh.
“My mission was not to get into this to be rich, I was going to be rich just in theory in doing it for a purpose,” said the businessman, who ended up losing all of his money and all of the money he brought in from others.
In total, he squandered as much as 8 million dollars, he said.
The whole scheme came to an end in November 2016, the morning after Kuoh flew from Liberia to see his family in North Carolina. He had just gotten his kids ready for school.
“There was a knock on the door,” Kuoh recalled.
An agent from Homeland Security Investigations wanted to ask him some questions.
Kuoh said he was initially “unfriendly” in his answers, but then the agent declared, “We have a warrant to arrest you.”
The Atlanta businessman recalled: “When I received a call that he had been arrested, I had no earthly idea why anybody in the world would want to arrest Cassell. … I spoke to him almost every day for three and a half years, and I guess there is two sides of him.”
In fact, Kuoh said one of his victims still doesn’t believe it was all fake. And in his interview with ABC News, Cassell offered this message to the victim: “Please, please stop giving money to people. I got information you recently give money to people in Kenya again, just two or three weeks ago. … Stop. It’s a scam. Please! It is a scam.”
Cassell has since pleaded guilty to a wire fraud conspiracy. He is cooperating with authorities, and hoped for a reduced sentence by telling his story.
He is now serving more than seven years in prison, and he was ordered to pay nearly 17 million dollars in restitution.
He said his arrest was the best thing that ever happened to him.
“It may sound funny to you, but I appreciate god a whole lot for me being caught,” Kuoh said. “Because I was going on the wrong path. Now that I’m caught, at least at this age, I have time to rewrite my name.”
But he warned that there is still a global army of scammers out there, saying, “There are so many. I can’t count them. They are in the thousands. There are so many. … And people get victimized every day. Every day.”
As for his own victims, he said he still thinks about all of them – especially the Atlanta businessman.
“I deeply regret being part of a syndicate that led me to this, and I owe them a lot,” he told ABC News as his eyes began to shed tears. “I really do owe them a lot. But this is the point of transformation. At least they can know that no one else will be victimized by me.”
The Atlanta businessman may be a little skeptical.
“This man could cry on the drop of a dime, for two or three days if he’d like,” the Atlanta man said of Kuoh. “This is how good Mr. Cassell is.”
Rose, the former U.S. attorney who helped prosecute Kuoh, was similarly dubious.
“While I appreciate the apology, it’s a little bit too late,” she said.
The Liberian embassy in the United States didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment about Kuoh’s accusations. But after Kuoh’s arrest, a top Liberian official sent a letter to U.S. authorities, applauding the arrest and expressing “grave concern” that “unscrupulous individuals” may try to exploit the country’s gold and diamond industry.
“[T]his is a serious problem that cannot be condoned and needs to be solved,” the letter said.
The letter denied any knowledge of government officials assisting Kuoh.
As for those who did help Kuoh, Rose had a message for them: “We’re coming for you.”
♦ Culled from ABC
Islamist militants kill up to 30 Nigerian soldiers in attack on base
Attack blamed on Islamic State in West Africa another blow to efforts to defeat insurgency ahead of presidential election
Islamist militants have killed up to 30 soldiers in an attack on a military base in north-east Nigeria in one of the biggest attacks of its kind this year.
Security sources said on Saturday the attack on Thursday by suspected members of Islamic State in West Africa was on a base in Zari village in the north of Borno State.
In 2016 ISWA split from Boko Haram, the jihadist group that has killed more than 30,000 people in the region since 2009, when it launched an insurgency to create an Islamic caliphate.
The Zari attack highlights the challenge to secure the north-east, months ahead of a February election in which security looks set to be a campaign issue.
“The battle lasted for about two hours and our colleagues fought them, but things became bad before the fighter jets arrived. We lost about 30 of our soldiers and about 10 were wounded,” said a military source who did not want to be named.
Another source, who also did not want to be named, said 20 to 30 troops had been killed in a surprise attack. Details only emerged days later because it occurred in a remote area near the border with Niger.
The attack, in the Guzamala local government area of Borno, is the latest blow to Nigeria’s efforts to defeat insurgencies by Boko Haram and ISWA.
Earlier this week Nigerian government officials ordered thousands of displaced people to return to Guzamala, an area considered by aid agencies to be unsafe, as pressure mounts to show progress in the war against the insurgents ahead of the presidential election.
The president, Muhammadu Buhari, a former general, won the 2015 election after vowing to crush Islamist militants. He plans to seek a second term in February.
In July the fourth commander in 14 months was named to lead the fight against the militants after a number of embarrassing defeats, despite the government having said since late 2015 that the Islamists in the region had been defeated.
In mid-July 20 Nigerian soldiers went missing following a clash with militants in the Bama area of Borno. Military sources say the troops are feared dead.
How Meghan McCain, Obama knock Trump at John McCain’s funeral service: ‘America was always great’
Meghan McCain and President Barack Obama took apparent swipes at President Trump on Saturday in a eulogy for John McCain — who sparred with Trump on a number of occasions before his death last week of brain cancer.
“The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great,’ McCain’s daughter said, in what appeared to be a reference to Trump’s presidential campaign slogan: “Make America Great Again.”
The remarks were made during a funeral service at Washington National Cathedral for the Arizona Republican, who died last week of brain cancer.
Obama’s jabs were more subtle but still appeared to be directed at the current occupant of the White House. He derided those in politics who traffic in “bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage.”
He also attacked “a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born of fear.”
“John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that,” he said.
It was Meghan McCain who had the most searing swipes at the president however. Notably she said that her father’s passing represented the passing of “American greatness. 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.”
Former presidents will be among those paying tribute to John McCain. (AP)
Former President George W. Bush also paid tribute to McCain.
“John – as he was the first to tell you – was not a perfect man. But he dedicated his life to national ideals that are as perfect as men and women have yet conceived,” he said. “He was motivated by a vision of America carried ever forward, ever upward, on the strength of its principles.”
The funeral service notably did not feature President Trump, who had feuded with McCain, particularly during the presidential campaign. In 2015, after McCain had said Trump’s platform had “fired up the crazies,” Trump had mocked McCain’s imprisonment in the Vietnam War, saying: “I like people that weren’t captured.” Trump has also fumed about McCain’s vote last year to kill off a bill to reform ObamaCare.
Both Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner were in attendance. Trump, meanwhile, went to the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. He also tweeted about subjects including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Russian investigation.
A six-term senator and a Vietnam veteran who was held as a prisoner of war for more than five years, McCain pushed for bipartisanship on the Hill. He ran against Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. He clinched the nomination in 2008 but was defeated in the presidential election by Obama.
Other notable speakers included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.
“His death seems to have reminded the American people that these values are what makes us a great nation, not the tribal partisanship and personal attack politics that have recently characterized our life, ” Lieberman, who McCain considered for his vice-presidential nominee, said.
McCain’s pallbearers included actor Warren Beatty and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Earlier Saturday, his casket traveled to the cathedral after stopping at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where McCain’s wife Cindy laid a wreath. Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly accompanied her.
On Friday colleagues, family and friends paid tribute to his service both in the military and the Congress as he lay in state underneath the Capitol rotunda.
With members of McCain’s family in attendance, Vice President Mike Pence said Americans “marveled at the iron will of John McCain” and praised him for holding fast “to his faith in America through six decades of service.”
“Generations of Americans will continue to marvel at the man who lies before us, the cocky, handsome naval aviator who barely scraped through school, and then fought for freedom in the skies; who witnessed to our highest values, even through terrible torture; and who became a generational leader in the United States Senate, where our nation airs its great debates,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.
Tributes have poured in from both sides of the aisle for the Republican senator and 2008 presidential nominee. On Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden remembered McCain as a brother, and said the two were “cockeyed optimists” in a memorial service for McCain at a church in Phoenix.
Biden, a Democrat, declared that McCain’s “legacy is going to continue to inspire generations.”
McCain is to be buried Sunday at his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy, next to his best friend from the Class of 1958, Adm. Chuck Larson.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Donald Trump’s tight, lonely corner
You’re president of the United States, running the most powerful nation on earth — stock markets soaring, joblessness sinking, the world in a season of relative peace and prosperity.
The bottom line: But President Trump has never been more isolated from allies he needs most.
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The public is against him: A new Washington Post/ABC News poll found a record 60% of Americans view him unfavorably.
Guess who those same people like a lot better: Robert Mueller (63% support his investigation) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions (64% say he shouldn’t be fired; 62% side with him on the Mueller probe).
His legal team is shrinking. Not only is top White House lawyer Don McGahn leaving soon, but McGahn deputy counsel Annie Donaldson is expected to leave soon after. “[T]he White House Counsel’s Office has dwindled to about 25 lawyers, down from roughly 35,” per the WashPost.
His allies are buckling, with embarrassing admissions in the plea deal by personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
Immunity has been granted to his gossip shield, David Pecker, CEO of the National Enquirer’s publisher; and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
Tensions with staff run high as ever. He has never been close to many of his top staffers, and this is more true than ever.
The N.Y. Times’ Maggie Haberman tweets: “His aides say he is behaving as if he is cornered.”
Be smart … Everything in Trump’s life has been about going big: The buildings got bigger, the deals got bigger, the bankruptcies got bigger —which only made the comebacks bigger, which made winning the presidency all the bigger.
The corner feels small, and he keeps being told the one big move he fantasizes about making — staring down Mueller under the bright lights, one on one — could destroy it all.
♦ Culled from Axios (Author, Mike Allen) Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios