Fox Business Network host Charles Payne on Thursday apologized to Sen. John McCain and his family for not challenging military analyst Thomas McInerney, who slammed the Arizona Republican's service in Vietnam.
Payne asked McInerney, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, whether McCain's opposition Wednesday to Gina Haspel as CIA director was justified.
McCain, 81, who is battling brain cancer, said he was opposing Haspel because she refused to "acknowledge torture’s immorality" during her Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday.
"The fact is John McCain — it worked on John," McInerney said in praising torture. "That's why they call him 'Songbird John.'
"The fact is those methods can work, and they are effective," he said.
Payne did not check McInerney on the McCain remark, explaining later in his Twitter apology that he "had the control room in my ear telling me to wrap the segment" and "did not hear the comment."
McInerney was widely bashed on Twitter, including by Tom Nichols a professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island:
A Navy pilot during Vietnam, McCain was captured in October 1967 after he was shot down on a bombing mission over Hanoi.
He was seriously injured and remained a prisoner of war until 1973. He spent two years in solitary confinement.
Of his captivity, McCain told Newsmax in a 2014 interview: "Our motto in prison, in Vietnam, was 'home with honor.'
"We wanted to make sure that we returned in the most honorable fashion.
"In other words, not to have given in to the efforts of the enemy for us to violate the code of conduct," McCain said.
"So, you stick together and see it through?" the senator was asked.
"Yes. Yes."
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