EVEN in death, the late Republican senator, John McCain, took one final swipe at longtime nemesis, US President Donald Trump.

During McCain’s memorial service in Arizona on Thursday, a former Democratic vice president, an African-American NFL legend, and a Democrat who runs an investment firm helping low-income Latinos all paid tribute to the man Americans viewed as a political “maverick”.

And those were just a few of the tributes during the Phoenix leg of McCain’s week-long memorial services.

By the time he is buried in Washington on Sunday, he will have been eulogised by two former presidents, a Russian dissident, a Republican senator who has spoken out against Mr Trump and the former mayor of Mr Trump’s hometown who has switched his allegiance to the Democrats.

During Thursday’s service, former vice president (and close friend of McCain’s) Joe Biden used his eulogy to say that it wasn’t politics that was most important to McCain, it was the underlying values that mattered.

Mr Biden, who said he thought of McCain as a brother, with a “lot of family fights”, said that the Arizona senator “could not stand the abuse of power wherever he saw it, in whatever form, in whatever country”.

He said McCain embodied basic values including fairness, honesty and respect. Mr Biden referenced how McCain fought for civility between politicians even if they disagreed.

Mr Biden also referred to his own son’s death from cancer, saying, “It’s brutal, it’s relentless, it’s unforgiving.” And he spoke directly to McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, seated in the front row: “You were his ballast.”

Twenty-four sitting US senators, four former senators and other leaders from Arizona were at the service for the statesman, former prisoner of war and two-time presidential candidate.

Other speakers reflected McCain’s view that the Republican Party needed to reach out more to minorities, immigrants and younger voters.

NFL star Larry Fitzgerald became friends with McCain during his 14 seasons with the Arizona Cardinals. In 2017, when Mr Trump called players who knelt during the national anthem “animals,” Fitzgerald slammed the president.

“To go out of your way to call people names, that was divisive and completely disrespectful,” Fitzgerald said in an interview.

The sports star told mourners that he felt the need to visit Vietnam to see what McCain endured during his five years as a prisoner of war.

Fitzgerald spoke about how on the surface the two could not have been more different: “He was white, I was black. He ran for president. I ran out of bounds,” Fitzgerald said to laughs from mourners.

But Fitzgerald said that while from very different worlds, they developed a meaningful friendship. He says it was the perfect example of what made him an iconic figure of politics and to the fellow man.

Fitzgerald said McCain “celebrated differences and championed humanity”. He said McCain “didn’t judge individuals on colour of skin, gender or their bank accounts but the merit of their character and content of their hearts”.

Tommy Espinoza, president and CEO of the Raza Development Fund, which helps low-income Latinos, called McCain “one of the greatest American heroes in our lifetime”.

Military members later carried the flag-draped casket of McCain out of the church to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s My Way. The longtime Arizona senator’s wife and children followed out the casket following a memorial service

After Thursday’s church service, a military aircraft was scheduled to take McCain’s body to Washington for a lying-in-state at the US Capitol on Friday, a service at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday, and burial at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.