WASHINGTON, D.C. Aug. 27 (DPI) – Sen. John McCain’s funeral Saturday at Washington’s National Cathedral will be a political event of the first order – it will include of course eulogies and speeches honoring a man who spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp and who served with distinction and independence in the US Senate for 30 years.

All of those tributes, though, will contrast sharply with the character of someone else, someone who will be conspicuously absent from McCain’s funeral – namely Donald Trump, the abrasive, dishonest and loathsome mob boss who has been 45th president of the US the last 18 months.  Trump has not been invited by the McCain family to attend the funeral.

Ever since Trump took office the left-leaning press and law-enforcement institutions in  Washington have been investigating Trump and his activities – activities involving members of his campaign staff, Russians, lawyers, even former mistresses.

But no probe has yet yielded charges of any kind against the man, and Trump – bombastic, caustic, always unrepentant – continues debasing America’s ever-fragile political culture.

But the McCain funeral in Washington Saturday – which will air live to millions – may end up being the “turning point” in the Trump presidency. It could well be the event that finally puts the Trump administration on the permanent defensive, as public perceptions of Trump’s character finally change among his core supporters.

Many have speculated about a “turning point”  – the Putin summit in Helsinki, Trump’s most incendiary tweets such as calling a former White House staffer a “dog” – that would send the Trump presidency reeling, and less influential.

Sen. McCain – whose own character and life experience contrasted much from those of Trump, a four-time draft dodger and real estate impresario with multiple bankruptcies – may do ultimately in death who no one alive in Washington has been able to do so far.