To judge from Trump’s performance at the funeral of his own father, Fred, in June 1999, McCain made the right call.

More than 650 people, including Joan Rivers, Donald Trump’s ex-wife Ivana, and scores of politicians and other real estate figures, attended the service, held at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. The long-time head pastor, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, had died, but Fred Trump and his son Donald had remained firm adherents of Peale’s admonition to keep laser-focused on success. Early in the proceedings, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani offered a brief thank you to the man who had built homes for thousands of New Yorkers. Then Donald’s three siblings offered loving tributes to their father, and his nephew Fred Trump III, spoke of his grandfather’s ongoing connection to ordinary people.

At an earlier wake for his father, Trump had recalled his father as “wonderful,” “the best,” “a fine man” who “gave us all a good start,” according to the New York Post. But when it came time to eulogize his father at the funeral, the focus shifted noticeably. He began by saying it was the toughest day of his own life. It was ironic, he said, that he’d learned of his father’s death right after reading a front-page story in the New York Times about the success of one of his own developments, Trump Place. He then enumerated all his other projects and said his father supported each one, and he finished by noting that on everything he’d ever done, Fred had known he would be able to pull it off.