McCain was gone, said Bush, who called his 2000 rival for the GOP presidential nomination a friend.

"John's voice will always come as a whisper over our shoulder we are better than this, America is better than this," Bush said.

But it was Meghan McCain's emotional remarks that most bluntly rebuked Trump, who had mocked her father for getting captured in Vietnam. At the pulpit of the spectacular cathedral, with Trump's daughter Ivanka in the audience, McCain's daughter delivered a broadside against the uninvited president.

"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 live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served," she said, speaking forcefully and, at times, through tears.