“I think these family affairs are — I don’t know much of the details about it,” McCain said simply. “Things happen in people’s families and I’m not excusing it, I’m not condemning it.”

But despite his silence on the fight itself, he had some words for the media, who had a field day with the story: “I just know that the kind of coverage that this got, in my view, is in keeping with the kind of coverage the liberals have accorded to Sarah Palin for a number of years, which in my view, is biased and unfair and sometimes unacceptable.”