According to a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, this ethos is again behind the White House’s lack of an apology over the remark made by Kelly Sadler, a special assistant to the president, in a meeting last week. In off-the-cuff comments that were quickly leaked to the news media, Ms. Sadler assessed Mr. McCain’s opposition to Mr. Trump’s nominee for C.I.A. “He’s dying anyway.”Two other forces are driving the decision not to apologize, that official said: The first is that White House officials believe that the Obama administration apologized for the United States’ behavior on the world stage too often. (An impassioned plea made last week by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, to keep internal discussions private was leaked to the website Axios by five aides within hours.) When he took to the podium to speak to reporters on Monday, Raj Shah, a deputy White House press secretary, reinforced the idea that the leaks coming from the White House were the main source of frustration internally, not the content of Ms. Sadler’s remarks.

Source: New York Times May 15, 2018 00:33 UTC