President Donald Trump and former John McCain presidential running mate Sarah Palin are not invited to memorial services for the iconic Arizona senator, multiple sources tell PEOPLE. 
 
 “Two names you won’t see on the guest list: Trump and Palin,” says a Capitol Hill source with knowledge of funeral plans for McCain, who died of brain cancer Saturday at age 81. 
 
 Get push notifications with news, features and more. 
 
 “Invitations were not extended” to the two political figures, confirms Carla Eudy, a fundraiser who has worked with and been friends with the McCain family for decades. 
 
 A source with knowledge of the funeral arrangements adds that several longtime McCain staffers were also removed from the invite list in recent days by Eudy. 
 
 The fundraiser, who helped plan the memorial services, did not specifically address where the requests originated, nor how they were conveyed. 
 
 Speculation in Washington, D.C., is that they came from “the family.” 
 
 “My guess is, it came from Cindy,” says a source close to the McCain family. “She is very protective of John’s memory and legacy. She’s also a grieving widow. I think she wants to get through this as best she can.” 
 
 Speculation also has focused on the process of disinviting someone to a funeral. 
 
 “Donald Trump and Sarah Palin were not served official notice outright,” says the source close to the McCain family. “I want to make that clear. It wasn’t a no-trespass order. They won’t be turned away by guards if they show up at the funeral.” 
 
 The stay-away messages were sent through intermediaries, the friend tells PEOPLE. 
 
 The messages were received, sources say. 
 
 RELATED VIDEO: John McCain’s Mom, 106, Is ‘Proud’ of His Legacy — But It’s ‘Tough’ to ‘Bury Your Child’: Source 
 
 Trump and McCain had a heated and very public feud, stemming from days leading up to the Republican primary. In that sense, a Senate source says, it “follows that the family could feel less than warm” about Trump. 
 
 Not so with Palin, other political operators say. 
 
 “It’s sad” that Palin was told to stay away, says a Republican source with ties to both camps. “They had a good friendship.” 
 
 Wednesday marks the 10-year anniversary of McCain selecting Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Palin is credited with reenergizing McCain’s poll numbers during his failed presidential bid in the fall of 2008. She also helped his re-election when he needed a boost. 
 
 In McCain’s two-hour HBO documentary and book, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and other Appreciations, released in May, he praised Palin for her work on the campaign but admitted for the first time that he regretted choosing her as his running mate. 
 
 Palin said at the time that she feels a “perpetual gut punch” every time she hears reports about McCain’s regrets, but added that “that’s not what Sen. McCain has told me all these years.” 
 
 Palin paid tribute to McCain on Saturday after news broke of his death. 
 
 “Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life — and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self.” 
 
 She continued, “John McCain was my friend. I will remember the good times.” 
 
 Another source close to Palin tells PEOPLE now that “out of respect for Sen. McCain and his family we have nothing to add at this point. The Palin family will always cherish their friendship with the McCains and hold those memories dear.” 
 
 Washington, meanwhile, is already looking past the funerals to see who will be appointed to replace McCain in the Senate. 
 
 Rumors that Cindy McCain is a candidate spring from Cindy herself, a source tells PEOPLE. 
 
 “I didn’t hear it directly from her, but that’s the common inside knowledge,” says the Senate source. “It was Cindy’s idea.” 
 
 Insiders expect the replacement to be named soon. 
 
 “The Governor of Arizona is coming into town [Washington, D.C.] on Saturday,” a Capitol Hill source says. “He’s going to meet with some folks to discuss the replacement.” 
 
 “We expect to know who it is next week,” says a political source. “It’s a hot topic in Washington. Everyone is caught up in this.” ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Rebecca Shabad 
 
 WASHINGTON — People close to Sen. John McCain have told the White House that the ailing Arizona Republican does not want President Donald Trump to attend his funeral and would like Vice President Mike Pence to come instead, a source close to McCain confirmed to NBC News. 
 
 McCain, 81, has been battling an aggressive form of brain cancer for nearly a year and is back home in Arizona after he underwent surgery last month for an intestinal infection. 
 
 The senator, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, said in an audio excerpt this week of his forthcoming memoir, "I don't know how much longer I'll be here," according to a clip aired by NPR. 
 
 The White House did not immediately return a request for comment. 
 
 Trump did not attend the recent funeral of former first lady Barbara Bush in Houston, Texas, in order "to avoid disruptions due to added security, and out of respect for the Bush Family and friends attending the service," the White House said last month. First lady Melania Trump attended the service instead, along with former Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and former first lady Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush plan to be eulogists at McCain's funeral service, which is to be held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the source close to McCain said. 
 
 McCain's wish for Trump to skip his funeral, first reported Saturday by The New York Times, comes as the two men have had a turbulent relationship, particularly since the 2016 presidential primary when Trump said McCain was considered a war hero only "because he was captured" during the Vietnam War and that Trump preferred military figures who avoided being taken prisoner by the enemy. 
 
 Last summer, Trump blasted McCain for his "no" vote that helped doom a key Obamacare repeal bill in the Senate. 
 
 When Axios reported Trump had been "physically mocking" McCain for the thumbs down gesture the senator indicated during his vote, McCain's daughter Meghan tweeted, "What more must my family be put through right now? This is abhorrent." 
 
 Meghan McCain tweeted Friday that she was heading home to Arizona "to be with my family" and plans to return to her job on "The View" on Tuesday. She added, "Thank you all again for your prayers, patience, understanding and compassion during this time. It means the world to me and my entire family." 
 
 Friends of McCain have visited him recently in Arizona, including former Vice President Joe Biden. McCain, who has served in the Senate since 1987 and in the House before that, has not returned to Capitol Hill for several months due to his cancer treatment. ||||| Donald Trump’s name was never mentioned. It didn’t have to be. The funeral service for John Sidney McCain III, at the Washington National Cathedral, on this swampy Saturday morning, was all about a rebuke to the pointedly uninvited current President of the United States, which was exactly how McCain had planned it. 
 
 Of course, there were fulsome tributes to Senator McCain’s bravery and courage and public service, stark reminders of the torture he endured as a prisoner of war, and of the policies he fought for (and against) in his many decades as a Republican politician from Arizona. But McCain knew that would not be the headline from the grand service, whose many details he personally oversaw. This was to be no mere laying to rest of a Washington wise man, nor just another funeral of an elder statesman whose passing would be marked by flowery words about the end of an era. It was a meeting of the Resistance, under vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows. 
 
 This was made clear a few minutes into the two-and-a-half-hour service, when McCain’s daughter Meghan, weeping at times, called it a funeral for nothing less than “the passing of American greatness” that her father represented, and not the “cheap rhetoric” that now passes for it. Later, her voice breaking, she said, “The America of John McCain does not need to be made great again, because it is already great.” Her eulogy was then interrupted by applause, the first time I have heard such a thing at a funeral in that great, cavernous, and sombre Episcopalian hall. She hadn’t uttered the name of the “President Non Grata,” as the Washington Post recently referred to Trump, nor did she need to. Midway through her remarkable speech, a pool report from the White House was released. Trump, wearing a white “Make America Great Again” hat, and having tweeted his morning complement of bile, directed at Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller, and his own Justice Department, had departed to play golf. 
 
 Before he died, McCain had personally enlisted Trump’s two Presidential predecessors to speak at the service, and when they came to the lectern both George W. Bush and Barack Obama fulfilled the role they had been assigned, offering tributes to the man they had each beaten in an election, as well as odes to the American political system they all loved. In any other context, maybe it would not seem to be a stinging criticism to hear Obama praise the “rule of law.” But Trump is the inescapable context of these times in Washington. “Perhaps above all,” Bush said, “John detested the abuse of power.” When Bush talked about McCain’s dedication to America’s leadership in the world and his hatred of tyrants, how many of those listening thought of the current President’s praise for many of those same dictators whom McCain had been so proud to oppose? Of course they thought of it. That was the point. 
 
 In the line of his address that is sure to be its most quoted, Obama seemed to describe both Trump and the divisive way in which he has chosen to lead the country. “So much of our politics can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult, in phony controversies and manufactured outrage,” Obama said. “It’s a politics that pretends to be brave, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.” Heads nodded. Democratic heads and Republican ones alike. For a moment, at least, they still lived in the America where Obama and Bush and Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney could all sit in the same pew, in the same church, and sing the same words to the patriotic hymns that made them all teary-eyed at the same time. When the two Presidents were done speaking, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” blared out. This time, once again, the battle is within America. The country’s leadership, the flawed, all too human men and women who have run the place, successfully or not, for the past few decades, were all in the same room, at least for a few hours on a Saturday morning. The President of the United States, however, was not. ||||| A White House official called Meghan McCain on Thursday to apologize after she mocked Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainTrump stokes new unlikely feud Meghan McCain: Living without father like 'some awful parallel universe' Leon Panetta’s nightmare is today's national security crisis MORE’s (R-Ariz.) cancer diagnosis during a meeting earlier in the day, a source told The Hill. 
 
 The Hill first reported Thursday that special assistant Kelly Sadler brushed off the senator’s opposition to President Trump Donald John TrumpPaul Ryan defends Navy admiral after Trump's criticism Trump discussing visit overseas to troops following criticism: report Retired Army General: Trump is ‘acting like an 8th grader’ in attacking ex-Navy SEAL who led bin Laden operation MORE’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, saying, “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.” 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 Sadler later called the senator's daughter Meghan McCain to apologize, according to a source. 
 
 Meghan McCain has not publicly responded to the comments herself, beyond retweeting her mother, Cindy, who chided the White House official. 
 
 "May I remind you my husband has a family, 7 children and 5 grandchildren," Cindy McCain wrote. 
 
 @kellysadler45 May I remind you my husband has a family, 7 children and 5 grandchildren. — Cindy McCain (@cindymccain) May 10, 2018 
 
 Sources told The Hill that they believed Sadler's comment was intended as a joke, but that it did not go over well with others at the internal White House meeting. 
 
 Sadler did not respond to The Hill's request for comment, and the White House did not make her available for comment. 
 
 In a statement, the White House did not deny that Sadler made the remarks, which came amid a discussion of Haspel's nomination to lead the CIA and McCain's opposition to it. 
 
 “We respect Sen. McCain’s service to our nation, and he and his family are in our prayers during this difficult time,” the White House said. 
 
 McCain, 81, has been at home in Arizona in recent months recovering from treatment for brain cancer. 
 
 Jonathan Easley and Jordan Fabian contributed
– Article after article has made mention of the fact that Sen. John McCain's wishes were that President Trump not be invited to his funeral. Sarah Palin apparently didn't make the cut, either. People reports the Palin news by way of several unnamed sources and quotes family friend Carla Eudy, who had a hand in planning the memorial services, as confirming "invitations were not extended" to either the president or McCain's 2008 running mate—who, Axios notes, was featured in the New York Times' lead story exactly 10 years ago Thursday. The headline: "Alaskan Is McCain's Choice; First Woman on GOP Ticket." (Palin was named as his running mate the day prior, on Aug. 29, 2008.) NBC News White House correspondent Kelly O'Donnell tweeted a sort of confirmation of the report, writing that Palin "is not expected to attend memorial. The McCain family has not commented on the invitation guest list." She went on to quote a Palin family source as saying, "Out of respect to Senator McCain and his family we have nothing to add at this point. The Palin family will always cherish their friendship with the McCains and hold those memories dear." Palin herself had this to say upon the announcement of McCain's death: "Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life—and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self. John McCain was my friend. I will remember the good times."