‘We can never surrender to what is happening in the country right now…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After more than a month on leave of absence following her father’s passing, Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain, made a poignant return to her regular seat as a co-host of “The View.”
A former Fox News correspondent and one of the show’s two “token conservatives”–along with close friend and fellow RINO scion Abby Huntsman–McCain previously lent a modicum of balance and hard-news gravitas to the coffee klatch, challenging the extremist liberal dogma of colleagues like Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar.
But she spent much of her return segment gushing over the support she had received from Democrats like former Vice President Joe Biden, leaving conservative viewers wondering whether she was still up to the role.
To some, it may have seemed a touching display of humanity, but to others it was more like a frightening study in Stockholm syndrome.
“None of us agree at this table on very much when it comes to politics and the world, but we are all sisters here,” McCain said. ” … This is what America should be.”
McCain didn’t stop at fuzzy platitudes about bipartisanship. Instead, she veered into what seemed like a thinly-veiled attack on President Donald Trump, reminiscent of the barbs she delivered while eulogizing her father.
“We can never surrender to what is happening in the country right now—I understand how divided and how scared a lot of people are and that it looks like the fabric of democracy is fraying,” she said.
She thanked her four “View” co-hosts for their unending support, as well as guest co-host Yvette Nicole Brown, who was filling in for Behar.
“In this moment, I want you to know that everything that was in him is in you, and this is your moment in time,” Brown said, while hugging the grief-stricken McCain. “You are here for a moment such as this. He has passed the torch to you–the mantle has been passed to you–and you are the person to carry it on.”
Eschewing the opportunity to recognize some of her father’s Republican friends and colleagues, she heaped praise on Biden and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the former running mate of John Kerry.
“God is real—I wouldn’t be here without my faith,” said McCain, “but I also wouldn’t be here without Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman. Those two men have carried me through this experience, and I just want to thank them for being uncles to me.”
McCain also vaguely alluded to the #MeToo movement and to the controversy over unsubstantiated sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“We’re living in a time—some fathers raise their daughters to be seen and not heard, they raise their daughters not to speak out. Raise strong women. … There is not enough said about women supporting women,” she said.
In his final year, John McCain was widely embraced by left-wing media for his extreme political about-face. After a high-profile feud with Trump, he prominently returned to the Senate floor following his brain-cancer diagnosis to cast the deciding vote against a Republican-led repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
He later released a book that offered a scathing critique of Trump and a harsh take-down of his former running mate, Sarah Palin, whom he blamed for his defeat at the hands of Biden and President Barack Obama.
It was not the first time the mercurial Arizona senator had crossed ways with the GOP, however. A similar grudge against George W. Bush had left him mulling a party change in the early 2000s.
Although former political adversaries Bush and Obama were present at the funeral, where Biden also delivered a eulogy, Trump, who had previously criticized McCain’s war record, was pointedly uninvited.
“Everything was planned, down to the song, and every element,” said Meghan McCain. “Everything that was done—including my eulogy—he planned.”
Even as some of Sen. McCain’s fellow GOP moderates, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, have rejoined the party ranks and tentatively accepted Trump’s combative leadership style in the face of increasingly violent and hostile leftist activism, Meghan McCain on Monday signaled her refusal to move in the direction of the party, opting instead to follow in her father’s checkered legacy.
“There was a lot of talk about what died with him—and I’m here today to tell you, it didn’t,” she said.