Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush will pay tribute to John McCain at a memorial service in Washington National Cathedral on Saturday, a week after the Arizona Republican died at age 81 after a battle with brain cancer.
The memorial service will notably not feature President Trump, who had repeatedly sparred with McCain in recent years.
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.
Both Bush and Obama will speak on Saturday, along with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and daughter Meghan McCain. McCain’s pallbearers will include 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.
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.
