The View opened its Thursday morning broadcast with a 10-minute segment on the Michael Cohen hearing. Co-host Meghan McCain barely said one word.
When they returned from the break, she explained her silence.
“First and foremost, I don't know if this makes me a good analyst or a bad analyst,” she said, “but I really was more interested in what was going on with Kim Jong Un and feeling great sympathy and compassion for Otto Warmbier's family and the things that the president said about not believing that North Korea had tortured and killed him, which they did and the human rights violations that continue to be sort of OK’d in our country.”
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McCain was referring to remarks made by President Trump in Vietnam about the death of American citizen Otto Warmbier in North Korea. “You have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. Some really, really bad things,” Trump told reporters. “But [Kim] tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”
When McCain repeated that she doesn’t know if that makes her a “bad analyst on this show,” Behar asked her, “Why do you say that?”
“Because the spectacle of the hearing, I thought didn’t move the needle one way or the other,” McCain answered. “I think if you’re a Trumper, it didn't change anything. I think if you hate Trump, it didn't change anything.”
As McCain continued to list off all of the abhorrent behavior that Trump was essentially giving a pass by taking Kim Jong Un at his word, Behar interrupted her to inquire, “Based just on that kind of treasonous behavior, why does the party stick with him? Why?”
“Because the alternative being presented in front of a lot of Republicans is socialism, third-term abortions, things that I just could never get behind and you have to present something that is rational,” McCain said before Behar shot back that those things are being “used as cudgels against Democrats” to damage the party as a whole ahead of 2020.
“People need to understand what those words really mean,” Behar said of terms like “socialism” and “infanticide.”
Taking offense, McCain said, “I’m a highly educated woman, I know exactly what those things mean. And I understand what Bernie Sanders is presenting in front of me and I do not agree with it.”
“I am a small government, America first conservative,” she continued. “And what is being presented to me on the alternative side is too radical for me.” She clarified that Trump is “also too radical” for her, but said that when she and her conservative co-host Abby Huntsman are “asked to be responsible for the sins of this administration, it's unfair.”
“Nobody’s asking you to do that,” Behar responded.
