WASHINGTON (AP) -- John McCain's daughter, her voice rising from tearful to impassioned tribute, posed her father’s legacy as a direct challenge to President Donald Trump.

Meghan McCain said her father was a “great man” and she encouraged others to live up to his example, setting a tone that echoed the senator’s own fighting spirit.

“We gather here to mourn 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,” she said, her voice first choking back tears then raising to anger.

She said to applause, “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”

Trump was not on hand for the ceremony, after McCain’s family made clear he was not invited.

Three former presidents, scores of members of Congress, current and former world leaders and family and friends gathered Saturday morning to eulogize McCain as an American hero. His flag-draped casket was escorted by military body bearers up the cathedral steps under gray skies.

 

 

Among those in the front row at the cathedral were Barack and Michelle Obama, George and Laura Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Dick Cheney and Al Gore. McCain’s motorcade arrived from the Capitol, where he laid in state overnight, and the procession made a stop at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where McCain’s wife, Cindy, placed a wreath.

At McCain’s request, Obama, a Democrat, and Bush, a Republican, both former rivals in the senator’s bids for the White House, were among those speaking about the six-term senator during Saturday’s service.

Obama spoke of McCain as understanding that America’s security and influence came not from “our ability to bend others to our will” but universal values of rule of law and human rights.

“So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty, tracking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage,” Obama said in another not-so-veiled nod to Trump. “It’s a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born in fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.”

Bush told of becoming friends with his former White House rival as the two would recall their political battles like former football players remembering the big game.

 

 

But mostly Bush recalled a champion for the “forgotten people” at home and abroad whose legacy will serve as a reminder, even in times of doubt, in the power of America as more than a physical place but a “carrier of human aspirations.”

“John’s voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder — we are better than this, America is better than this,” Bush said.

It is the last public event in Washington, where McCain lived and worked over four decades, and part of McCain’s five-day, cross-country funeral procession. He died Aug. 25 at age 81.

“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, ” said former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a longtime friend and fellow global traveler who McCain once considered as his vice presidential running mate.

“This week’s celebration of the life and values and patriotism of this hero, I think have taken our country above all that,” he said. “In a way, it’s the last great gift that John McCain gave America.”

Two of Trump's top aides, White House chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis, flanked Cindy McCain as she approached the memorial and joined the service. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner were also in attendance.

McCain was a decorated veteran who was held for more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He refused early release. Trump obtained deferments for his college education and a foot ailment.

The memorial stop provided another contrast with Trump in McCain’s carefully designed funeral procession, but the speeches by the former presidents are expected to carry special weight.

McCain had long urged the Senate and the polarized nation to recognize the humanity even in bitter political opponents. McCain’s request for speeches by the former presidents, to some, represents that ideal.

“We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe,” McCain wrote in his farewell letter to the nation, read posthumously by a longtime aide. “We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.”

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.

“Back,” McCain wrote on the last page of his recent memoir, “where it began.”