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Trump Finally Weighs In on McCain, Two Days After He Died Trump Relents Under Pressure, Offering ‘Respect’ to McCain
(about 1 hour later)
WASHINGTON — In a statement that began by highlighting their past conflicts, President Trump expressed his respect on Monday for Senator John McCain, adding that he had ordered the White House and all public flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of the Vietnam War hero and two-time Republican presidential candidate. WASHINGTON — In the Senate chamber on Monday, John McCain’s desk was draped in black and topped with a vase of white roses. The majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, rose to praise Mr. McCain as a colleague and hero who “spotlighted many of our highest values.” Outside, an impromptu memorial took shape as the flags over Capitol Hill flew at half-staff.
“Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country,” Mr. Trump said, “and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment.” In only one building in Washington were Mr. McCain’s legacy and achievements greeted with anything like ambivalence: the White House.
Mr. Trump spent much of Monday declining several requests by journalists to comment publicly on the death Saturday of Mr. McCain after a yearlong battle with brain cancer, adding to the ire from veterans groups and critics that grew around his conspicuous silence and apparent delay in ordering the White House flag lowered to half-mast. President Trump, under enormous public and private pressure, finally issued a proclamation of praise for Mr. McCain on Monday afternoon, two days after the senator’s death, and ordered the flag to be flown at half-staff seemingly in the only place it wasn’t already, the presidential complex.
The president, whom Mr. McCain had previously said was not invited to his funeral services, said other senior aides would attend memorial events in his place. They will be John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff; John Bolton, the national security adviser and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The day had begun with the remarkable sight of the flag flying atop the White House’s flag poll, while just beyond the building, at the Washington Monument, others fluttered midway down the polls that circle the obelisk. The president stubbornly refused repeated requests from officials as senior as Vice President Mike Pence and John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, to acknowledge Mr. McCain’s death with a formal and unifying statement, according to four administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
Mr. McCain, 81, who had survived a Vietnam War prison camp and weathered the gradual coarsening of politics within his own party, appeared to have a sense of how the day might unfold. For the last time, the fiery Arizona senator stepped in to call for patriotism over politics when Mr. Trump would not. At midday, the drama was punctuated by the words of Mr. McCain himself, whose final statement to the nation was delivered posthumously through a top aide.
[Read Senator John McCain’s farewell statement.]
Speaking in a posthumous statement delivered through a top aide, Mr. McCain issued a pointed rebuttal of Trump-era politics, although he never mentioned the president by name.
“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,” Mr. McCain wrote in a statement delivered by Rick Davis, his family spokesman and former campaign manager. “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.”“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,” Mr. McCain wrote in a statement delivered by Rick Davis, his family spokesman and former campaign manager. “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.”
In his statement, Mr. McCain, one of a few Republicans in Congress who pushed back against Mr. Trump and publicly criticized his style of leadership, alluded to “blood and soil,” a German nationalist slogan dating to the 19th Century that has been resurrected by the alt-right and white nationalist movement in the United States. [Read Senator John McCain’s farewell statement.]
“We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil,” Mr. McCain wrote. Then, after the ire from critics, lawmakers and veterans’ groups crescendoed, the president released a statement to put the matter behind him, but which began with highlights of past conflicts.
“Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here,” Mr. McCain wrote to close his letter. “Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.” “Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country,” Mr. Trump said, “and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment.”
In the Capitol on Monday, Mr. McCain’s desk on the Senate floor was draped in black and topped with a vase on white roses. And outside the building that housed his longtime office, impromptu memorials had begun to take shape, including flowers and a white Navy hat. On Monday evening, he told a dinner of evangelical supporters, “We very much appreciate everything that Senator McCain has done for our country.”
Across the country, a series of Republican governors in at least five states that Mr. Trump won in the 2016 election — Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, North Dakota and Iowa — ordered flags at government buildings to be lowered through Mr. McCain’s interment. The Department of Homeland Security sent a “flag action notification” on Monday to state and local officials and Homeland Security agencies around the country, calling for flags to be flown at half-staff until Mr. McCain is buried. The president, whom Mr. McCain had previously said was not invited to his funeral services, said that other senior aides would attend memorial events in his place. They will be Mr. Kelly; John R. Bolton, the national security adviser; and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Along with Mr. Kelly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, and Bill Shine, the deputy chief of staff for communications, had urged the president to let aides take over the White House response to Mr. McCain’s death.
But at the White House, a split screen from the rest of the country unfolded. The American flag flew on top of the Executive Mansion where Mr. Trump began his public schedule by touting a revamp of his trade deal with Mexico. The president seemed so willing to deliver a policy win to the public that the television cameras went live before the telephone equipment had Enrique Peña Nieto, the Mexican president, on the line. For much of the day, Mr. Trump appeared oblivious to the criticism. He resisted when Mr. Kelly called him at 7 a.m. and urged him to let the staff handle the response to Mr. McCain, a person familiar with the exchange said. He let Mr. Kelly know the day and week would continue as scheduled. Then he tweeted about professional sports, trumpeted a revamped trade deal with Mexico and hosted the Kenyan president.
At one point, Mr. Trump seemed so willing to publicly deliver a policy victory that television cameras inside the Oval Office went live before the telephone equipment had Enrique Peña Nieto, the Mexican president, on the line.
“Enrique?” Mr. Trump asked, growing flustered on live television as his aides tried to figure out the phone. “Do you want to put that on this phone, please? Hello? Be helpful.”“Enrique?” Mr. Trump asked, growing flustered on live television as his aides tried to figure out the phone. “Do you want to put that on this phone, please? Hello? Be helpful.”
While he was expressive in his phone conversation with Mr. Nieto, the president sat with his arms crossed and looked straight ahead as reporters asked him several times to expand on the single tweet he sent over the weekend offering his condolences to Mr. McCain’s loved ones. During another event with President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Mr. Trump leaned forward, hands steepled, and ignored shouted questions about Mr. McCain as the cameras rolled. With the president’s attention elsewhere, the visual of the flag raised high at the White House made the rounds on social media, and prompted a statement from the American Legion, the nation’s largest wartime-veterans service organization.
The visual of the flag raised high at the White House made the rounds on social media, drawing the ire of Trump administration critics and several veterans’ groups, until it was finally lowered again late Monday afternoon. “On the behalf of the American Legion’s two million wartime veterans, I strongly urge you to make an appropriate presidential proclamation noting Senator McCain’s death and legacy of service to our nation, and that our nation’s flag be half-staffed through his interment,” Denise Rohan, the national commander of the American Legion, wrote in a statement that one White House adviser said caught the president’s attention.
One veterans’ group, VoteVets, issued a statement of scathing criticism. “Donald Trump refuses to lower flag, for John McCain. As we said yesterday, Donald Trump is a pathetic, thin-skinned, self-centered, low-class, petty coward,” the group wrote in a Twitter post on Monday. As he publicly dodged questions from reporters about Mr. McCain, Mr. Trump allowed a split screen to unfold as much of the nation, including Mr. McCain’s Senate colleagues, publicly memorialized him on Capitol Hill. Senators rose one by one to pay their respects to a man they called a statesman and hero.
And the American Legion, the nation’s largest wartime veterans service organization, called for the White House to lower the flag. “Generation after generation of Americans will hear about the cocky pilot who barely scraped through Annapolis, but then defended our nation in the skies,” said Mr. McConnell in uncharacteristically personal remarks. “Witnessed to our highest values even through terrible torture. Captured the country’s imagination through national campaigns that spotlighted many of our highest values. And became so integral to the United States Senate, where our nation airs and advances its great debates.”
“On the behalf of The American Legion’s two million wartime veterans, I strongly urge you to make an appropriate presidential proclamation noting Senator McCain’s death and legacy of service to our nation, and that our nation’s flag be half-staffed through his interment,” Denise Rohan, the national commander of the American Legion, wrote in a statement. Senator Jeff Flake, Mr. McCain’s fellow Arizona Republican, implored his colleagues to learn something from Mr. McCain’s iconoclasm.
Still, Mr. Trump initially kept far away from the topic, instead doling out several messages on Twitter about professional football and the golfer Tiger Woods. “We have lately wasted a lot of words in this town doing and being everything that John McCain was not,” he said. “We would do well to allow this moment to affect us in ways reflected not merely in our words but also our deeds.”
Presidents often issue proclamations after significant events, like a mass shooting or the deaths of important figures, specifying when flags should fly at half-staff and for how long at federal buildings, military posts and facilities abroad, like embassies. Senators from both parties appeared to embrace a proposal, first made by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, to rename one of the Senate’s office buildings after Mr. McCain. Doing so could provide senators any easy step around a potentially thorny fight: the building’s current namesake, Richard B. Russell, was a staunch segregationist who led the fight in the Senate against desegregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It was not immediately clear that the flag at the White House was initially raised on Monday at the direction of the president, or if the flag is automatically fully raised absent a presidential proclamation to fly it at half-staff. The United States Flag Code provides for the lowering of the American flag on the day of the death of a member of Congress and the following day. Many Democrats but especially Republicans, long since weary of Mr. Trump’s impolitic handling of the duties of his office, offered only passing criticism of the president’s ambivalence. Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who occasionally clashed with Mr. McCain and will succeed him as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters that the senator was “partially to blame” for Monday’s flag controversy. Mr. McCain, he said, “wasn’t too courteous” in his disagreements with Mr. Trump.
“Flag custom is always political by definition,” said Charles A. Spain, a director at the Flag Research Center. “The president has the ability to just reach out” and lower the flag. Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the chamber’s longest-serving Republican, sounded more regretful about the president’s behavior.
The president previously issued a proclamation for flags to be lowered on the day that the Rev. Billy Graham was buried early this year. Mr. Trump made the proclamation on Feb. 21, and Mr. Graham was buried in early March. “That should not have happened. That should have been automatic,” he said of the president’s delay in issuing a statement. “You just do things that are sensible and sensitive.”
Flag policy has been a priority for Mr. Trump, even before he was president. Mr. Trump has attacked players in the National Football League who kneel during the playing of the national anthem in a silent protest for civil rights, saying their actions were disrespectful to the flag and the United States military.Flag policy has been a priority for Mr. Trump, even before he was president. Mr. Trump has attacked players in the National Football League who kneel during the playing of the national anthem in a silent protest for civil rights, saying their actions were disrespectful to the flag and the United States military.
Former President Barack Obama issued a proclamation that American flags fly at half-staff a day after Senator Edward M. Kennedy died in August 2009. Mr. Obama ordered that the flags remain at half-staff for four days. The president previously issued a proclamation for flags to be lowered on the day that the Rev. Billy Graham was buried early this year. Mr. Trump made the proclamation on Feb. 21, and Mr. Graham was buried in early March.
And in 2015, Mr. Trump criticized then-President Barack Obama for not lowering the flags soon enough after the shooting in Chattanooga, Tenn., where five military members were killed. Mr. Obama issued a proclamation in honor of the Chattanooga victims after Republicans criticized his inaction. This time, White House officials were reluctant to wade into the flag symbolism that had been so important to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump, however, was similarly criticized earlier this summer for his delay in honoring the victims of a shooting in a newsroom in Annapolis, Md. Days after the shooting, Mr. Trump called for flags to be flown at half-staff. “I’m not commenting on that,” Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, said in a brief phone call, adding that he was not working in “flag world.”
Mr. McCain, who had survived a Vietnam War prison camp and weathered the gradual coarsening of politics within his own party, appeared to have a sense of how the day might unfold. For one last time, Mr. McCain stepped in to call for patriotism over politics when Mr. Trump would not.
In his final statement, Mr. McCain alluded to “blood and soil,” a German nationalist slogan dating to the 19th century that has been resurrected by the white nationalist movement in the United States.
“We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil,” Mr. McCain wrote.
He closed his letter with a plea: “Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.”