Dave Chappelle Among Thousands Who Paid Respect To John McCain At U.S. Capitol

Thousands of people recently gathered in Washington, D.C. to reflect on the life and service of senator John McCain. Many celebrities and politicians came to show support to surviving family members of the late senator.

According to a report by the Daily Mail, among those celebrities spotted in D.C. was Dave Chappelle, attending the service for McCain. Footage cited in the report shows that Chappelle toured the United States Capitol Rotunda, which is where Senator John McCain’s funeral service was being held. After the tour he visited McCain’s casket.

McCain was often regarded as being a “maverick” from politicians on both the left and the right. Similarly to John McCain, Chappelle is known for going against the grain. Dave Chappelle was born and grew up in Washington D.C. and has worked anecdotes about the city into much of his stand-up comedy, and the comedian has long been regarded as something of “maverick.”

Dave turned down $50 million to continue his extremely popular Comedy Central television show, Chappelle’s Show. Furthermore, Dave Chappelle is known to often sit on a stool and work a stream of consciousness style of comedy in his stand-up shows, sometimes going for many hours, a characteristic often absent in most stand-up shows.

Dave Chappelle is also known for having a brash sense of humor, in particular, towards the subject of racism. The comic is vehemently anti-racist, though he has inserted black stereotypes as well as copious usage of the N-word into his sketch comedy, presumably as a way to ironically address the subject matter. His approach has elicited mixed reactions from prominent members of the black community.

Dave Chappelle has caught criticism from both the left and the right. Recently, his comments on transgender persons in a Netflix special took heat from some proponents of transgender equality. In a later special, his comments on comedian Louis C.K. caught the scorn of one of C.K.’s accusers in an essay. In 2016, Chappelle was the first person to host Saturday Night Live after Donald Trump won the General Election, and stated that he was going to give Trump “a chance.”

He later expounded on that statement, apologizing and clarifying that he was not a supporter of the Trump administration.

Unlike Chappelle, the president was reportedly asked to refrain from attending John McCain’s funeral. Donald Trump and John McCain had numerous problems with one another, going all the way back to Trump’s early presidential campaign, in which he suggested that John McCain, a prisoner of war, was less of a war hero than “people who were not caught.”

Since that time, the president and John McCain had a tumultuous relationship. McCain scored the final blow as he seriously hindered Trump’s legislative agenda to “repeal and replace Obamacare,” McCain struck down a Republican healthcare bill on the senate floor after casting an unexpected “no” vote in 2017.

It was one of his final acts in the United States Senate.

While Dave Chappelle and John McCain had little in common on the surface, their unpredictability, sense of humor, and tendency toward going against the grain in their respective professions made them highly regarded figures.