Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin says hearing that Sen. John McCain now regrets choosing her as his 2008 running mate is 'like a perpetual gut-punch' every time she hears about it.

And the latest verdict from the ailing 81-year-old Arizona Republican, she said, is perplexing because McCain has told her very different things over and over in person.

'That's not what Sen. McCain has told me all these years, as he's apologized to me repeatedly for the people who ran his campaign – some who now staff MSNBC, the newsroom there, which tells you a lot,' Palin said.

Hearing the opposite on TV, she said, was unnerving.

'It's not a real fun thing that part of my job is the requirement – is having to read the news every day,' Palin lamented.

The onetime Alaska governor spoke to DailyMail.com in Washington before headlining a fundraising event for a Trump-friendly political action committee.

Senator John McCain revealed in his new book that he regrets picking former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Above the two are seen at a campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, in August 2008

Palin tells DailyMail.com that McCain (pictured during their defeat on election night) has shown a different attitude towards her since the failed campaign and has even apologized 'repeatedly' for her treatment at the hands of the Republican Party

The New York Times revealed earlier this week that McCain wrote in his new book, The Restless Wave, that he regretted choosing Palin as his running mate and wanted Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman as his VP instead.

Palin said it's possible that McCain himself doesn't believe she was a drag on his White House aspirations a decade ago, but that hangers-on in his inner circle could be presuming to speak for him.

'I attribute a lot of what we're hearing and reading regarding McCain's statements to his ghostwriter or ghostwriters,' she explained.

'I don't know all the details of his condition right now. It happens to me also where people speak for me and a bell is rung, and you can't un-ring the bell.'

'I don't know unless I heard it from Sen. McCain myself,' she said.

McCain's recurring apology for her treatment at the hands of the Republican Party elites who turned their noses up at her 'going rogue' style, she insisted, 'has almost been a running joke between the two of us over these years.'

'I stop him all the time and say, "Please don't apologize."

There's nothing to apologize for anyway, Palin said, since former president Barack Obama's victory over her and McCain was basically written in the stars.

'There were elements of a perfect storm for Barack Obama to have been elected. It worked out the way that it was supposed to work out,' she said.

McCain-Lieberman 2008: The senator admitted that he wished he has picked Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman instead (right) but was advised against it

McCain's documentary and book are due to be released this month as he battles an aggressive form of brain cancer. He is pictured above after voting on a Senate tax bill in November 2017

That's because the Obama years 'opened a lot of people's eyes to the trajectory of our country,' she said, hastening the Trump era into place.

Palin took issue with the way President Trump has treated McCain, a war hero who was tortured for years in North Vietnam after his plane was shot down – and famously refused to accept an early release unless the men he commanded were allowed to come out of the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton' with him.

Trump has hurled a steady stream of disparagement in McCain's direction since early in the 2016 campaign season, once saying in Iowa that the senator shouldn't be considered a war hero 'because he was captured.'

At first Palin said she was 'frustrated' with Trump for not having a lighter touch with McCain.

Then she stopped and said a better word would be 'disappointment' because Trump has been 'disparaging Sen. McCain – his record, his history as a veteran – when we don't know all the details of all those years that Sen. McCain made sacrifices for this country as a POW.'

While she defended McCain's honor, Palin had choice words for one of his more memorable votes on the Senate floor.

McCain's book will be released on May 22, 2018

The famously plainspoken Palin didn't dispute that she disagreed with McCain for enraging the president by casting a 'no' vote last year and killing a bill aimed at repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Obamacare is 'still on the books after all the promises that the GOP would repeal [it],' she vented, ultimately allowing that 'it's not all on Sen. McCain's shoulders' because plenty of Democrats became 'obstructionists' over the high-stakes legislative episode.

Asked if McCain should have voted yes,' Palin didn't blink.

'I wish that he would have,' she said. 'And Sen. McCain and I, at least in the past, had a good enough relationship where if I had the opportunity, I would have told him that.'

McCain, who is battling brain cancer, has already said he won't run for re-election again.

Palin told DailyMail.com that she will 'choose to remember the good times with him' even though he appears to have turned on her.

'In spite of everything that has erupted in these past days with his spokesperson – or perhaps he himself – saying that he regrets that they chose me to run on their ticket,' she said, 'despite all that, he has been my friend.'



