The second the phrase “Neanderthal thinking” came out of President Joe Biden’s mouth in reference to Republican governors who were prematurely reopening their states, it was inevitable. Conservatives had found their new “basket of deplorables” and would start self-identifying as cavemen to own the libs.
On Friday, Joy Behar opened The View by asking if this whole “scandal” could be considered a “win to just get Republicans to admit that evolution exists?”
Over the next several minutes, Sunny Hostin dismissed the “pearl clutching” by Republicans after years of defending Donald Trump; and Sara Haines laughed off the whole thing, explaining the difference between calling someone a “Neanderthal” and saying, as Biden did, that they are engaging in “Neanderthal thinking.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Then it was Meghan McCain’s turn. “Isn’t this manufactured outrage or is this a real problem?” Behar asked her.
“I actually don’t think this is manufactured,” McCain replied, without skipping a beat, accusing Biden of some sort of hypocrisy because he has said he wants to restore the “soul of the nation.” She too linked the president’s words to Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” comments during the 2016 election, which Trump supporters reclaimed as a bizarre badge of honor.
“You can laugh and say ‘Oh, it’s a joke,’ whatever, but Republicans across the country already feel like people on the left think they’re dumb rednecks,” she continued, “they’re just stupid deplorables in baskets, nobody cares about their trucks and their flags. That’s what Republicans think the media thinks of them.”
In the end, she said, “All it does is it’s going to help Republicans be more tribal and think that we’re just deplorable Neanderthals, the left has no place for us, so there’s no unity whatsoever.”
Then, in an apparent attempt to make things even worse, McCain drew a parallels between Trump calling MS-13 gang members “animals,” which “the media jumped all over for weeks” and Biden’s “Neanderthal thinking” comment.
“I have no problem calling vicious gang members ‘animals,’” she said. “But if it’s not OK to call gang members ‘animals,’ but it’s OK to call Republicans who are in the middle of the country ‘Neanderthals’ it just seems like a lot of hypocrisy.”
