Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Thursday bashed at the White House aide that gave offending comment for Senator John McCain’s cancer diagnosis, as a response to McCain’s vocal opposition to Gina Haspel, who is President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA.
“Ms. Sadler, may I remind you that John McCain has a lot of friends in the United States Senate on both sides of the aisle,” Graham, who is a close friend of McCain, told CNN. “Nobody is laughing in the Senate.”
Graham’s remarks came shortly after it was reported that the White House aide, special assistant Kelly Sadler, dismissed McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel’s nomination, saying at a meeting that his vote is not that important because “he’s dying anyway.” The White House did not deny the account of Sadler’s remarks.
On Wednesday McCain announced his opposition to Haspel’s nomination, saying that he is disappointed by her “refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality.”
Haspel has been under fierce scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers who have voiced their concern about her relation to the brutal CIA detention and interrogation techniques used in the years following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
However, during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Haspel promised that she is not going to restart such a program if she is confirmed as CIA director, adding that she does not believe torture works. But some Republican lawmakers also criticized her remarks saying that her failure to condemn waterboarding is raising more than a few questions about whether she believes torture is wrong.
McCain’s opposition to Haspel comes as result of him being tortured while being a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain has said that during his captivity he was forced into falsely confessing to crimes, and since then he has remained a strong opponent of the so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques.
Be the first to comment