Meghan McCain really didn’t want to defend QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on The View Thursday morning, but she just couldn’t help herself.
After her co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Joy Behar tore into Greene for specific threats she made against Democratic leaders in the years leading up to her election last fall, McCain admitted that they were right. “She’s a nightmare for Republicans. I mean, she’s a total whack job conspiracy theorist. Everyone is right, I can’t defend any of the things she’s done or said.”
Then came the buts.
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“I have very conflicting things about removing her from office, sort of like just randomly, in the same way we’re hearing calls from everybody from [Kevin] McCarthy, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley to be removed from office right now,” McCain added. “So I do think it opens up a slippery slope, and I do worry about whenever Republicans are back in power, this same standard being put to those we view as radical.”
McCain allowed that “maybe” Rep. Greene is “in a different position” because, again, she specifically “incited violence” against House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, among others. “But it did happen before she was in office,” she said. “She’s a crazy person, she’s an absolute nightmare for Republicans to deal with.”
She could have stopped there, but instead, she decided to push back on Hostin’s argument that Greene should be removed from the House education committee (because she has endorsed school shooting conspiracy theories) by drawing a false equivalence with one of her Democratic colleagues.
“I think we should be analyzing congresspeople who are on committees,” McCain said. “Eric Swalwell is accused of sleeping with a Chinese spy and being targeted and he’s on the House intelligence committee and that’s something Nancy Pelosi has refused to deal with. I don’t think someone who has been compromised by a Chinese spy should have access to our intelligence.”
McCain was referring to the report from Axios last December that said Swalwell had been targeted by a suspected Chinese intelligence operative known as Christine Fang during his 2014 re-election campaign. While Fang allegedly had “romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors,” the report did not contain any such allegations against Swalwell, who says he cut off all ties to her in 2015 after federal investigators alerted him to their concerns.
“It's not the same thing exactly as what happened with Marjorie Taylor Greene,” McCain admitted near the end of her rant, calling the congresswoman a “conspiracy theorist who is harassing people on the street.” But The View host asked, “What am I supposed to do? She’s crazy and it’s embarrassing.”
