JOHN MCCAIN/TRUMP PEOPLE: “The White House on Friday [5-1–18] refused either to acknowledge or disown a purported barb about Sen. John McCain’s health by a communications staffer. Instead, press secretary Sarah Sanders suggested questions about the incident were meant to sow discord among President Donald Trump’s aides. ‘I’m not going to get into a back and forth because people want to create issues of a leaked meeting,’ Sanders said. Kelly Sadler, a special assistant who handles surrogate communications, told other staffers during a meeting Thursday that McCain’s opposition to Trump’s CIA director nominee, Gina Haspel, does not matter because ‘he’s dying anyway,’ a White House official told CNN…She confirmed Sadler still works at the White House. And she disputed the suggestion that Trump himself is setting a hurtful tone among his aides with his own disparaging remarks about McCain, who is being treated for brain cancer, and others.”
-Kevin Liptak and Veronica Stracqualursi, “White House refuses comment about Sadler’s McCain remark,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, May 11, 2018 4:50 pm