Meghan McCain on Friday morning took the time to address a pair of “insanely despicable comments” made by conservatives about her father, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who is currently undergoing brain-cancer treatment.
“It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway,” White House special assistant Kelly Sadler reportedly said aloud Thursday during a private meeting on McCain’s staunch opposition to Gina Haspel, President Trump’s pro-torture nominee to lead the CIA.
“Don’t feel bad for me or my family,” Meghan said in response Friday morning on The View. “We’re really strong. There is so much more love and prayer and amazing energy being generated towards us than anything negative at all, and I feel so blessed.”
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She then directly addressed Sadler: “Kelly, here’s a news flash...: We’re all dying. I’m dying, you’re dying, we’re all dying. Since my dad has been diagnosed—the past, almost a year, July 19th—I feel like I understand the meaning of life, and it is not how you die; it is how you live.”
McCain then seemingly called for Sadler’s dismissal from the White House, noting that in any other office, such words about a dying man would not be tolerated.
“The thing that surprises me most is... I don’t understand what kind of environment you’re working in where that would be acceptable and you can come to work the next day and still have a job,” she said to applause. “That’s all I have to say about it.”
McCain’s co-host Whoopi Goldberg also took her turn directly addressing Sadler. But she wasn’t as polite as her colleague, directly linking the White House assistant’s comments to the president himself.
“So Kelly, here’s the thing: I guess the fish stinks from the head because it’s easy to say something like that, and not think that, oh, that is a wrong-headed comment to make out loud,” Goldberg said. “You can think what you want, but you don’t say this kind of thing out loud. But unfortunately, you are under someone who does this.”
Also on Thursday, frequent Fox News guest Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney argued on the Fox Business Network that torture is good because “it worked on John McCain.” He derisively referred to the senator as “Songbird John,” falsely suggesting the Vietnam prisoner-of-war revealed information to his captors. (McCain himself has said he only gave his torturers the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line when pressed.)
The View hosts lauded Fox News for officially banning McInerney for those comments (but not before his years-long history of spouting conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birth certificate or the fate of disappeared commercial airliner MH370.)
And McCain only addressed McInerney’s comments by using their fallaciousness to emphasize her and her family’s belief that torture does not yield productive results.
“[‘Songbird’] is a really ugly nickname... At some point when you are tortured, everyone breaks, and that’s how you get false information,” she said. “And I want to emphasize, it was a hard day yesterday, but I get to come into work with women I have such affection for, and respect, and I have so much love about my family.”
She concluded, seemingly speaking to both Sadler and McInerney: “My father’s legacy will be talked about for hundreds of years. These people are nothing burgers.
“Nobody’s gonna remember you. Nope.”
