Why did story about aide saying McCain was ‘dying anyway’ anger Trump? Because it was leaked

A West Wing aide’s morbid remark about gravely ill Senator John McCain has not yielded widespread White House soul-searching. Instead, it has led to a push to fire those responsible for leaking that story and others that have bedevilled US President Donald Trump’s administration.

Nearly a week after Kelly Sadler dismissed McCain’s opinion on Trump’s CIA nominee during a closed-door meeting by saying “he’s dying anyway,” a torrent of criticism has rained down on the White House. The administration has repeatedly declined to publicly apologise, but the fallout has shaken the West Wing, where the focus remains on who leaked to the media.

Trump is demanding that whoever let the story go public be fired, according to a White House official and an outside Trump adviser. Neither was authorised to speak publicly about private conversations and spoke to Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Leaks have long been a problem for Trump’s White House, but this one has drawn particular scrutiny within the building because of the staying power of the damaging story. Several senior officials, including chief of staff John Kelly and counsellor to the president Kellyanne Conway, have called closed-door meetings to warn junior staffers that a shake-up could be in the offing. The mood has grown increasingly tense.

“It’s an honour and a privilege to work for the president and to be part of his administration. And anybody who betrays that I think is a total and complete coward and they should be fired,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders this week. “We’ve fired people over leaking before.”

Rumours have been circulating over who is responsible for the leak, and chatter about aides looking for the exits has picked up, though previous declarations of crackdowns did not yield shake-ups or end the leaks. Trump has claimed the reports of leaking are exaggerated, but he also suggested in a provocative tweet this week that those who do so are “traitors.” National security adviser John Bolton said that some leakers were “national security risks” and that Kelly was organising an effort to cut them down.