CNN commentator Ana Navarro has said the White House is “irritated that John McCain is not dying of cancer” following its failure to apologize after an aide quipped that the senator’s opinion didn’t matter because “he’s dying anyway.”

As the White House faced criticism for not issuing an official apology over the aide’s comments, the political pundit, who is no fan of President Donald Trump, slammed officials.

“I think, frankly, what’s happening here is that the White House is irritated that John McCain is not dying of cancer—he’s living with cancer," Navarro said on CNN's New Day on Tuesday. "And he is choosing to make every single day on this Earth something that’s meaningful and counts, and he is still confronting Donald Trump for his outrages.”

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The aide at the center of the controversy, Kelly Sadler, has offered the McCain family a private apology following comments made in a closed-door meeting that dismissed the senator’s opposition to President Donald Trump’s CIA nominee Gina Haspel with the crude comment about his health.

However, the White House has not offered a public apology, instead stating that the incident has been “dealt with internally,” The Hill reported.

But the lack of public apology has upset McCain’s family, and left some prominent members of the Republican party at odds with the White House.

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Senator Lindsey Graham was among those who spoke out against the remark, telling Face the Nation on Sunday: "If it was a joke, it was a terrible joke. I just wish somebody from the White House would tell the country that was inappropriate, that's not who we are in the Trump administration."

Graham added that it was not up to him to decide whether Trump should issue an apology, but added: “If something happened like that in my office—somebody in my office said such a thing about somebody, I would apologize on behalf of the office.”

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This article was first written by Newsweek

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