Joe Biden Mourns the Death of Decency in the White House (1789-2018)

White House special assistant Kelly Sadler reportedly said Thursday: “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway,” in reference to John McCain in a closed-door meeting with about two dozen White House communication staffers. That’s a genuinely fucked up thing to say!

And it didn’t sit well with McCain’s friend, former Vice President Joe Biden, who released a statement on Friday condemning Sadler and the administration, saying her comments marked the end of “decency” as we know it.

“People have wondered when decency would hit rock bottom with this administration. It happened yesterday,” Biden said in the statement. He went on to praise McCain as “a genuine hero” and said children will learn from the senator’s example.

Joking about a man dying is pretty soulless, but let’s be real—the White House’s sense of “decency” didn’t die yesterday. Donald Trump and his administration have been terrorizing immigrants, blatantly lying to the press, and calling white supremacists “very fine people” since day one. (Let’s not forget that McCain voted for nearly every one of Trump’s Cabinet nominees and threw his support behind the Republicans’ enormously regressive tax bill.) Biden, for his part, is also not a totally unmotivated actor here, as he continues making a lot of moves that someone positioning for a presidential run might make.

Trump kicked off his campaign by calling Mexican people “rapists.” That was “rock bottom” if such a thing ever existed.