Meghan McCain confronts Sarah Sanders over Trump's alleged attacks on veterans

The View’s Meghan McCain confronted former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over the president’s alleged remarks about the military during the debut episode of the show’s 24th season.

As part of a six-person panel on Tuesday Ms McCain quickly targeted Ms Huckabee Sanders with questions regarding recent accusations in a report by The Atlantic that the president had made derogatory remarks about lost service members and prisoners of war and called them “losers” and “suckers”.

Ms McCain, the daughter of late former senator and Vietnam veteran John McCain, explained that while usually, she harbours a “distrust of unnamed sources” as were referenced in The Atlantic’s article, she feels the accusations “have legs" because the president has a “record of insulting veterans”.

“The problem as I said before is the president has a pattern of saying incendiary things about people like my father, about people like the Khan family, about people like Col Vindman," Ms McCain said, referring to instances in which Mr Trump has been criticised for his attitude towards veterans.

“I think if this charge had been levelled anonymously against any other politician, I think people would second-guess it,” she added, asking for the former press secretary’s perspective on the issue.

In response, Ms Huckabee Sanders insisted that the president was consistently respectful towards the military during her time in office.

“After spending nearly every single day for two-and-a-half years with the president I can tell you I witnessed firsthand the president’s respect and admiration for the men and women of our armed forces.”

 “I was one of the few people that were in the room,” said Ms Huckabee Sanders, who served as press secretary for Mr Trump between 2017 to 2019, in regards to the accusations in The Atlantic.

"I’m not an anonymous source, I’m going on the record, and I’m telling you it didn’t happen. That’s not who this president is and that’s not how he feels about the men and women in our military.” 

Written by the magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg and drawing on multiple anonymous sources, the article detailed a number of unflattering alleged incidents surrounding the president involving war dead.

Mr Trump has fiercely denied the article’s claims, asking “what animal would say that?” and suggested its quotes came from disgruntled former staffers.

“Probably it’s a couple of people that have been failures in the administration that I got rid of,” Mr Trump told journalists on Thursday. “And I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough. Or it was just made up … There’s not much more I can say. All they’re trying to do is influence a presidential election.”

The comments from Ms McCain come following a longstanding conflict between the McCains and the president. The late senator and president never hid their mutual disdain for one another and Mr Trump publicly criticised the late senator both while he was alive and following his death. 

While campaigning in 2015 for the Republican nomination, Mr Trump disputed McCain's title as a “war hero”. “He’s not a war hero,” said Mr Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured." 

The president also doubled  down on a bitter tirade against the late senator in 2019 saying: “I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.”

At the time Ms McCain, told ABC News that Mr Trump “spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he will never be a great man.”