Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) knew what he was doing when he used his decades-long relationship with former Republican colleague John McCain to refute Meghan McCain’s criticism of Joe Biden on The View Thursday morning.
After fielding a handful of questions about the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, the Senate Majority Leader turned to the only conservative member of the show’s panel, who began by acknowledging how long they have known each other. “My family loves you, I think of you as a very intellectually honest man,” McCain said. “I really do, even though we disagree on many things.”
When Schumer replied by telling her how much he “loved” and “misses” her dad, McCain thanked him and said, “That’s why it’s weird to interview you, but there we go.” Then came her question: “You were a vocal critic of Trump’s immigration policy of separating the children from their families at the border. And you called it cruel, inhumane and ‘so unlike the America we have known.’”
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“It happened under Obama and kids are still being detained under President Biden,” she continued, failing to draw a distinction between detention and family separation, “and his press secretary Jen Psaki admitted they have to get their act together with their border policy. Why haven’t you been as critical of President Biden as you were of President Trump? And for Republicans like me that are confused that this is still going on, and there seems to be a different media narrative, can you bring me some clarity?”
“Yes, and it’s a good question, Meghan, as always,” Schumer said, speaking to the 36-year-old pundit a bit like she was a child. “You always ask good questions, even when we don’t agree.”
He went on to explain that Biden “inherited a huge mess on immigration” that’s “not going to be cleaned up in a month” and that “his view of immigration is not like Donald Trump’s, who was nasty, negative, horrible to immigrants.”
“His view is more like your father’s view and my view, which is compassionate but also competent,” Schumer said, invoking John McCain. “One of the problems with the Trump administration is they had such incompetence. So they are rolling up their sleeves and working on this. I think it will get better in the next few months. If it doesn’t, I will go to them and say, ‘You’ve got to do better,’ and if they don’t, I will be public.”
“But I’ve got to give them a little bit of a chance because they inherited a big, big mess created by Donald Trump, whose views on immigrants—it just turned me off so, to be so nasty to these people and to separate the children from the parents and not care about it,” he continued. “Your father would have been out there speaking against Trump, and I’ll bet—I don’t know, I don’t want to speak for him—but he may have given Joe Biden a chance too.”
Whoopi Goldberg let out a knowing laugh on that line before throwing to commercial.
