Meghan McCain hit back on Friday at a Trump administration official who mocked her father, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), over his battle with brain cancer, suggesting that the staffer should be fired.
The Hill reported Thursday that White House special assistant Kelly Sadler dismissed John McCain’s opposition to President Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, saying “he’s dying anyway.”
“I don’t understand what kind of environment you’re working in when that would be acceptable and then you could come to work the next day and still have a job,” Meghan McCain said on “The View.” “And that’s all I have to say about it.”
“The View” co-host Meghan McCain added that what’s important “is not how you die, it is how you live,” though she conceded that “it was a hard day yesterday” after the insult was reported.{mosads}
“My father’s legacy is going to be talked about for hundreds and hundreds of years,” she said. “These people? Nothing burgers.”
John McCain, who last year was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, announced his opposition to Haspel’s nomination on Wednesday, citing her failure to sufficiently denounce torture.
Haspel has come under fire from many lawmakers — mostly Democrats — because of her ties to brutal detention and interrogation techniques used by the CIA on terror suspects in the years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
She vowed during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday not to restart the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program if confirmed as CIA director.
But some lawmakers bridled at her failure to condemn waterboarding or to state unequivocally that torture is immoral.
The senator and former GOP presidential nominee was himself tortured during his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, including being forced into falsely confessing to crimes. He has remained a staunch opponent of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
McCain has been absent from the Senate as he treats his cancer in Arizona.
“The other thing I want to say,” Meghan McCain said Friday, “is that, Kelly, there’s a little news flash, and this may be a little intense for 11 o’clock in the morning on a Friday, but we’re all dying.”