In an emotional eulogy sharing her memories and love for her father Saturday, Meghan McCain made sure to make her opinions on President Donald Trump very clear.

John McCain “was a great man,” she said. “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.”

It was an obvious reference to President Trump, whose campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again,” and who got four draft deferments to avoid serving in the Vietnam War.

Later, Meghan McCain was even clearer: “The America of John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold. She is resourceful and confident and secure. She meets her responsibilities. She speaks quietly because she is strong. America does not boast because she has no need. The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.” Applause followed.

The speech was delivered at the Washington National Cathedral front of three former presidents, many current and former members of Congress, and a plethora of other political elites. The McCains did not invite President Trump to the service.

“John McCain was not defined by prison, by the navy, by the Senate, by the Republican party or any one of the deeds in his life,” Meghan McCain said. “John McCain was defined by love.”

A rush transcript of her eulogy follows.

“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate, very much, to leave it.” When Ernest Hemingway’s Robert Jordan at the close of For Whom the Bell Tolls lies wounded and waiting for his last fight, these are his final thoughts.

My father had every reason to think the world was an awful place. My father had every reason to think the world was not worth fighting for. My father had every reason to think the world was worth leaving. He did not think those things.

Like the hero of his favorite book, John McCain took the opposite view. He had to have a lot of luck to have had such a good life. I am here before you saying the words I have never wanted to say, giving this speech I’ve never wanted to give, feeling the loss I have never wanted to feel. My father is gone.

John McCain III was many things. He was a sailor, and aviator, a husband, a warrior, a prisoner. He was a hero, a congressman, a Senator, a nominee for president of the United States.

These are the titles of a life that has been well lived. They are not the greatest of his titles nor the most important of his roles. He was a great man. 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.

He was a great fire who burned bright. In the past few days, my family have heard from so many Americans who stood in the warmth and light of his fire and illuminated what is best. We are grateful to them because they are grateful to him. A few have resented that fire, for the light it cast upon them. For the truth it revealed about their character. But my father never cared what they thought and even that small number still have the opportunity, as long as they draw breath, to live up to the example of John McCain.

My father was a great man. He was a great warrior. He was a great American. I admired him for these things but I loved him because he was a great father. My father knew what it was like to grow up in the shadow of greatness. He did just as his father had done before him, he was the son of a great admiral who was also the son of a great admiral. When it came time for the third John Sidney McCain, to become a man, he had no choice, in his eyes. He walked in those same paths. He had to become a sailor, to go to war, he to have his shot at becoming a great admiral as they also had done.

The paths of his father and grandfather led my father directly to the harrowing hell of the Hanoi Hilton. This is where they showed his character, his patriotism, his faith in the worst circumstances. This is where all the biographies, campaign literature and public remembrances say he showed character, patriotism, faith and endurance in the worst of possible circumstances. This is where we learned who John McCain truly was. All of that is true except for the last part. Today, I want to share with you what I found out. It was not in the Hanoi Hilton. It was not in a cockpit of a jet. It was not on the campaign trail. He was in those places but the best of him was somewhere else. The best of John McCain, the greatest of his titles and the most important of his roles was as a father.

Imagine the warrior, the knight of the skies, gently caring his little girl to bed. Imagine the dashing aviator who took his his aircraft hurdling off pitching decks in the South China Seas kissing the hurt when I skinned my knee. Imagine the distinguished statesman who counselled presidents and the powerful singing with his little girl in Oak Creek during a rainstorm to “Singing in the Rain.” Imagine the Senator taking his daughter out of school because he believed I would learn more about America at the town halls he held. Imagine the elderly veteran of four and government whose wisdom and courage were sought by distinguished men, with his eyes shining as happiness as he gave his blessing for his grown daughter’s marriage.

You all have to imagine that. I don’t have to because I lived it all. I know who he was. I know what defined him. I got to see it every single day of my blessed life.

John McCain was not defined by prison, why the navy, by the Senate, by the Republican party or any one of the deeds in his life. John McCain was defined by love. Several of you have crossed swords with him or found yourselves on the receiving ends of his famous temper or or were at a cross purposes to him on nearly everything are right at this moment doing your best to stay stone faced. Don’t. You know if John McCain were in your shoes here today he would be using some salty word he used in the Navy while my mother jabbed him in embarrassment. He would stop talking but he would keep grinning. She was the only one who could do that.

On their first date, when he did not know what sort of woman she was, he recited a Robert Service poem to her called “The Cremation of Sam McGee” about an Alaskan prospector who welcomes his creation as the only way to get warm in the icy north. “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold / The arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.” He had learned it in Hanoi. A prisoner in the next cell had rapped it out in code over and over again during the long years of captivity — my father figured if she would sit through that and appreciate the dark humor that had seen him through so many of years of imprisonment, she just might sit with him through a lifetime. And she did.

John McCain was defined by love. This love of my father for my mother was the most lasting of them all. Let me tell you what love meant to John McCain and to me. His love was the love of a father who mentors as much as he comforts. He was endlessly present for us and though we did not always understand it, he was always teaching. He did not expect us to be like him. His ambitions for us unmoored from any worldly achievement was to be better than him, armed with his wisdom and informed by his experiences, long before we were old enough to have assembled our own.

As a girl I did not appreciate what I most fully appreciate now, how he suffered and how he bore it with the stoic silence which was once the mark of an American man. I came to appreciate it when he demanded it of me. I was a small girl thrown from a horse and crying from a busted collarbone. My dad picked me up and took me to the doctor and got me all fixed up. He immediately took me back home and made me get back on that same horse. I was furious at him as a child but how I love him for it now.

My father knew pain and suffering with an intimacy and immediacy most of us are blessed never to have endured. He was shot down, he was crippled, he was beaten, he was tortured, he was starved, and he was humiliated. That pain never left him. The cruelty of his Communist captors would ensure he would never raise his arms above his head for the rest of his life. Yet he survived. Yet he endured. Yet he triumphed. There was this man who had been through all that with a little girl who simply did not want to get back on her horse. He could have sat me down and told me all of that and made me feel small because my complaint was nothing next to his pain and memories. Instead he made me feel loved. He said in his quiet voice that spoke with authority and meant you had best obey, get back on the horse. I did. Because I was a little girl, I resented it. Now, I look back on that time and see the expression on his face when I climbed back up and rode again, and I see the pride in his eyes as he said “Nothing is going to break you.”

For the rest of my life, whenever I fall down, I would get back up. Whenever I am hurt, I drive on. When I am brought low, I rise. That is not because I am uniquely virtuous or strong or resilient. It is simply because my father, John McCain, was.

When my father got sick, when I asked him what he wanted me to do with this eulogy, he said, “Show them how tough you are.” That is what love meant to John McCain. Love for my father meant caring for the nation entrusted to him.

My father, the true son of his father and grandfather, was born into a sense of the heart and character of American greatness and was convinced of the need to defend it with ferocity and faith. John McCain was born in a distant and now vanquished outpost of American power. He understood America as a sacred trust. He understood our republic demands responsibilities even before it defends its rights. He knew navigating the line between good and evil was often difficult but always simple.

He grasped our purpose and meaning was rooted in a missionary’s responsibility stretching back centuries. Just as the first Americans looked upon a new world full of potential for a grand experiment and freedom self-government, so do their descendants have a responsibility to defend the old world from its worst self. The America of John McCain is the America of the revolution: fighters with no stomach for the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot making the world anew with the bells of liberty.

The America of John McCain is the America of Abraham Lincoln: fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and suffering greatly to see it through. The America of John McCain is the America of the boys who rushed the colors in every war across three centuries, knowing that in them is the life of the republic. And particularly those by their daring, as Ronald Reagan said, gave up their chance at being husbands and fathers and grandfathers and gave up their chance to be revered old men. The America of John McCain is, yes, the America of Vietnam, fighting the fight even in the most forlorn cause, even in the most grim circumstances, even in the most distant and hostile corner of the world, standing even defeat for the life and liberty of other people in other lands.

The America of John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold. She is resourceful and confident and secure. She meets her responsibilities. She speaks quietly because she is strong. America does not boast because she has no need to. The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great. [applause]

That fervent faith. That proven devotion. That abiding love. That is what drove my father from the fiery skies above the Red River Delta to the brink of the presidency itself. Love defined my father. As a young man, he wondered if he would measure up to his distinguished lineage.

I miss him so badly. I want to tell him he did. I take small comfort in this. Somewhere in the great beyond where warriors go, there are two admirals meeting their much loved son. They’re telling him he’s the greatest among them.

Dad, I love you. I always have. All that I am, all that I hope, all that I dream is grounded in what you taught me. You loved me and you showed me what love must be. An ancient Greek historian wrote the image of great men is woven in the stuff of other men’s lives. Dad your greatness is woven into my life.

It is woven into my mother’s life. It it is woven into my sister’s life and woven into my brothers’ lives. It is woven into the life and liberty of the country you sacrificed so much to defend. I know you’re not perfect. We live in an era where we knock down old American heroes for all their imperfections, when no leader wants to admit to fault or failure. You were an exception and gave us an ideal to strive for.

Look, I know you can see this gathering here in this cathedral. The nation is here to remember you. Like so many other heroes, you leave us draped in the flag you love. You defended it. You sacrificed it. You have always honored it. It is good to remember that we are Americans. We don’t put our heroes on pedestals just to remember them. We raise them up because we want to emulate their virtues. This is how we honor them and this is how we will honor you.

My father is gone. My father is gone. And my sorrow is immense. I know his life and I know it was great because it was good. And as much as I hate to see him go, I do know how it ended. I know that on the afternoon of August 25, in front of Oak Creek in Cornville Arizona, surrounded by the family he loved so much, an old man shook off the scars of battle one last time and arose a new man, to pilot one last flight — up and up and up, busting clouds left and right, straight on through to the kingdom of Heaven. And he slipped the earthly bonds, put out his hand and touched the face of God.

I love you, Dad.