NEW YORK — Ex-White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said “someone had it out” for the White House communications aide who was quietly let go on Tuesday after making a comment about Sen. John McCain’s health.
The aide, Kelly Sadler, had made the misguided remark, reportedly intended as a joke, nearly a month ago.
“Someone had it out for Kelly Sadler,” Scaramucci, who served as the White House communications director for less than two weeks last summer, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “Because that was a sorry joke. It’s an unforgivable statement — I’m not here suggesting the statement was OK — but what I am suggesting as someone that’s run a pretty decent corporation, that when you’re sitting inside the inner sanctum and somebody says something like that, to run outside the sanctum and rat on that person — I think that’s a terrible thing to do to the person.”
CNN previously reported that Sadler’s comment had been made in response to McCain’s opposition to President Donald Trump’s CIA director pick, Gina Haspel. Sadler reportedly said of the Arizona Republican that “he’s dying anyway.”
Immediately after the remark was reported, the White House was reluctant to condemn it. McCain has been undergoing treatment for brain cancer.
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The White House had been strategizing an exit for Sadler for the past two weeks, a senior administration official said. There had been a discussion about relocating her to another agency or department outside of the White House, and it remains unclear if she is going somewhere else or leaving the administration entirely.
“Somebody could have simply said, ‘Hey, bad thing to say, let’s drop it right here,’ but they had it out for her. So they got to go outside, get their cell phone and anonymously rat her out,” Scaramucci said Tuesday night on “Cuomo Prime Time.”
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