Just a few weeks after officially endorsing Joe Biden for president, Cindy McCain came to The View on Tuesday to fill in for her daughter Meghan, who is currently on maternity leave. And it was instantly noticeable how much further she was willing to go in condemning Donald Trump and lifting up his Democratic opponent.
Early in the show, after expressing how excited she is about her new granddaughter and mourning the passing of her mother-in-law, Senator John McCain’s mother Roberta, who died this week at 108, Cindy McCain turned to the presidential election that’s exactly three weeks away.
McCain explained that she decided to endorse Biden because “like many Americans” she wants a country that’s “more civil” and a leader that has a plan “not just COVID, but a plan for the country to dig out of this mess.” But “more importantly,” she said she wants a leader that “respects our troops, respects our men and women who serve.”
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“I just do not believe my two sons are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers,’” she continued, referring to Trump’s reported comments about men and women who serve in the military. “I really believe that Joe can put us back on the right track. Something has to put us back on the right track and I believe both Joe and Kamala can do that.”
Later, McCain had even harsher words for Trump during a discussion about the large rally he held in Florida on Monday where his mostly maskless supporters were packed together for the duration of his hour-plus speech.
“To me, it’s a simple discussion. It’s all about arrogance and ego,” she said. “This is not presidential. This has everything to do with a personal agenda. That’s why we need a change. That’s exactly why we need Joe Biden in the White House to stop this and act with character and dignity and leadership and empathy, more importantly. We’ve lost over 200,000 people in this country to COVID and still he does things like this in Florida. It’s outrageous.”
If the producers of The View hoped for Cindy McCain to bring some of the fiery conflict for which her daughter has become known, they would have been disappointed. Instead, Cindy went much further than Meghan McCain has in attacking Trump and defending Biden.
Over the past several months, Meghan McCain repeatedly drew false equivalence between the Black Lives Matter protests, in which participants were mostly masked, and the Trump rallies where they were not, complaining at one point that her co-hosts “make me defend [Trump] when you say he wants people to die.”
And while Cindy has explicitly endorsed the Biden campaign, Meghan would only say in August that she was not voting for Trump. “I want to see how this plays out, I want to see the debates,” she said at the time. “I’m like such a last-minute—I mean, I’m so spoiled because I’ve loved so many elections and this one is not my favorite for a lot of different reasons.”
