Lindsey Graham says the Trump administration needs to apologize for the 'terrible joke' about his friend John McCain

published 13 May 2018

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) "can be criticized for any political decision he's ever made or any vote he's ever cast," said McCain's longtime friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on CBS News Sunday, "but he's an American hero. And I think most Americans would like to see the Trump administration do better in situations like this. It doesn't hurt you at all to do the right thing and to be big."

Graham was referring to the news that a Trump administration aide, Kelly Sadler, joked that McCain's view of CIA director nominee Gina Haspel "doesn't matter, because he's dying anyway." "It's [a] pretty disgusting thing to say," Graham said on Face the Nation. "If it was a joke, it was a terrible joke. I just wish somebody from the White House would tell the country that was inappropriate — that's not who we are in the Trump administration."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.