The View’s resident conservative co-host Meghan McCain on Tuesday defended the white St. Louis couple who brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters near their property, claiming the recent “defund the police” narrative from activists “breeds hysteria and it breeds fear.”
Earlier this week, video and images of personal injury lawyers Mark and Patricia McCloskey pointing firearms at demonstrators in front of their mansion went viral. Protesters, who were marching to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s house to call for her resignation, entered the private street through a gate, prompting the McCloskeys to exit their home with guns to yell at the demonstrators.
Discussing the wildly varying reactions to the incident, which is now being investigated by local police with the couple described as victims, McCain agreed that the image of the couple brandishing weapons at protesters was a snapshot of a divided America. At the same time, she took issue with the way the McCloskeys carelessly handled their weapons.
ADVERTISEMENT
“This woman had her finger on the trigger the entire time,” she declared. “Trigger control is a big thing with pistols. The man has no muzzle control whatsoever. That means the front part of AR-15—he’s pointing it in all directions. It’s highly, highly dangerous and irresponsible.”
Noting that the couple’s narrative has been extremely inconsistent regarding the protesters, she still empathized with the fear the couple supposedly felt as they saw marching demonstrators enter their street.
“The question I always had is what happens when you start going into the suburbs when people a lot of times are armed and do feel intimidated,” she said, adding: “If a mob of people comes into your neighborhood and breaks a gate, that’s one of the things they’re claiming, people are going to feel intimidated. I don’t agree with how they did it.”
Reiterating that “it’s a snapshot of what’s going on in America,” McCain went on to say that it’s a “blueprint of a cultural war.”
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg, meanwhile, questioned the claims made by the couple that there was “an angry mob” of hundreds of protesters that crashed through an iron gate, saying the video just shows a few demonstrators who are walking past the house.
“They said they called the police and they called the people that are supposed to come check on you, the neighborhood watch,” Goldberg added. “They said nobody came. I have to wonder how many people were there. Were they out there waiting for them to come out with their guns? The timeline is odd to me.”
McCain reacted to the veteran View host by leaning back on social justice activists and progressives pushing for police reform and the defunding of law enforcement.
“But the question I also have is if the narrative is now ‘defund the police’ and when you call the police—and there’s been audio and video has been played all over Fox News of people calling the police and the 911 call saying please call your representative in City Hall instead,” McCain asserted, apparently referencing a 911 call made by a scared woman trapped in her car as protesters marched through an intersection.
“And if there’s a feeling...that if you call the police and they are being defunded and they won’t come, it breeds hysteria and it breeds fear,” she continued. “And I think we have to be really clear about this role going forward of what the police is in the United States of America.”
Goldberg countered by saying she doesn’t know the situation in that particular neighborhood, but in her experience, private enclaves tend to have their own security, wondering why the couple felt the need to call the police.
“I don’t live in a gated community so I don’t know,” McCain tersely replied.
