Both lived lives more interesting and honorable than that of Donald Trump, and possibly as a result, both men incurred Trump’s wrath. Everyone remembers that Trump famously suggested that McCain wasn’t a real hero because he had been captured, but Krauthammer and Trump also traded barbs, with Trump tweeting in 2015 that Krauthammer was an “overrated clown.” Of course, their animosity predated this presidential campaign. (In 2011, I asked Krauthammer about Trump having called him a “sad fool.” Krauthammer responded humorously, insisting that he was a “very happy guy.”)

As to whether McCain’s death really is a metaphor for the death of Ronald Reagan conservatism, Krauthammer would probably agree. Just last summer, as news of McCain’s illness spread, Krauthammer called McCain “the spirit of Reaganism,” saying he was “even more heroic than Reagan himself in his own life…” “I think there’s a kind of a symbolism in him being struck down in this sense by this illness,” Krauthammer continued. “I think it reflects that waning. And we are going to miss him because he is the one—I don’t want to give an obituary—but I’m just saying over time, if you think who would succeed McCain, I don’t think he has a successor.”