McCain’s daughter slams White House aide’s death joke
WASHINGTON: Republican US Senator John McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, has questioned how the aide who disparaged her ailing father during a White House meeting still has a job there.
Kelly Sadler, a White House communications aide, dismissed Senator McCain’s objection to President Donald Trump’s nominee to be CIA director, Gina Haspel, by saying it “doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway”, a source familiar with the closed White House meeting said.
Speaking on ABC’s The View, which she co-hosts, Meghan said she wanted to tell Sadler that her father’s battle with brain cancer had made her realise the meaning of life was “not how you die, it is how you live”.
“I don’t understand what kind of environment you’re working in when that would be acceptable, and then you can come to work the next day and still have a job,” she said.
White House spokesman Sarah Sanders said later on Friday that Sadler still worked at the White House, and refused to confirm or deny what Sadler had said.
McCain, who has spent the last few weeks convalescing at his home in Arizona, released a statement after Haspel’s Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, slamming her for refusing to condemn torture.
He also recommended that his fellow senators vote against her.
McCain was tortured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, sustaining injuries from which he has never completely recovered.
Several of McCain’s fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill condemned Sadler’s remarks.
Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa tweeted that the United States should “treat this war hero and his family with the civility and respect they deserve”.
Democratic former vice-president Joe Biden, a long-time Senate colleague and friend of McCain, said: “People have wondered when decency would hit rock bottom with this administration. It happened yesterday.”