CNN’s John King Scolds GOP Senators For Not Confronting Trump On McCain: ‘Give Me A Break!’

In the aftermath of White House aide Kelly Sadler mocking Sen. John McCain by saying “he’s dying anyway” while brushing off his opposition to Gina Haspel’s CIA director nomination, a number of McCain’s Republican colleagues in the Senate expressed outrage over the remarks and called on the White House to apologize. On Tuesday afternoon, they got their chance to confront the president about the unsettled issue — and nobody said a thing.

During Wednesday’s broadcast of Inside Politics, CNN host John King and his panel addressed Republican senators’ silence when face-to-face with Trump. King presented a before/after montage of Republicans calling for the White House to apologize, only for them to then say they “ran out of time” following Tuesday’s lunch with POTUS.

With the panelists laughing, King chastised the lawmakers for caving when they got their chance to bring up this matter to the president.

“I’m sorry, they’re a co-equal branch of government,” King noted. “They say the president kept talking, the president was talking about his agenda. I mean, give me a break. What are they so afraid? If it’s important to you, interrupt the president and say you’re on our turf, you need to do something about it.”

CNN political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson added that one would expect that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) would have brought it up and called for a public apology considering the fact that McCain is his best friend.

“But once they get the president in their presence, they act like something that rhymes with chicken,” she observed.

Watch the clip above, via CNN.