Meghan McCain says the media portrays Republicans as ‘evil’
Meghan McCain is speaking out about the backlash she receives over her conservative views — and says that, while she’d never vote for Trump and seems open to backing family friend Joe Biden as president despite his Democrat affiliation, the current political climate has “made me more conservative.”
“The explosion in the culture war, which has happened with the rise of Trump, has made me more conservative,” the 34-year-old star of The View told Elle in a new interview.
She went on to accuse the media of villainizing Republicans.
“No Republican is good enough for a certain group of people,” the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain claimed to the magazine. “All Republicans are evil to a certain segment of the media. And you become more tribal, and more territorial of your people and what you represent. And that has certainly happened to me.”
An example she cited is her appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers in May, during which Meyers admonished her for accusing Rep. Ilhan Omar of being anti-Semitic. Meyers pointed out that Omar had apologized for her objectionable tweets and told McCain it was “fairly dangerous” to continue her public criticism of Omar after the Somalian-born freshman congresswoman, who has since become the target of “send her back” chants from Trump supporters, received death threats.
“I don’t know if [Meyers] could have gotten away with speaking to a liberal woman the way he spoke to me,” McCain told Elle’s Carrie Battan. “I don’t think he wanted to have a conversation; I think he just wanted to lecture me. But I can’t get myself into a place where I’m like, Woe is me. It’s not fair for me to feel bad for myself.”
Mom Cindy McCain told the magazine that she always advises her daughter to “never get angry.” The younger McCain put it this way:
“My presence on the show has been, ‘Nobody’s going to bully me, nobody’s going to talk down to me, and nobody’s going to pull the kind of s**t that’s been pulled on a lot of people in this chair. And I will be vocal, and I will live in the moment, for better or worse,’” she said, before confessing, “I should be better at being less reactive.”
McCain’s on-air spats with her View colleagues, as well as her conservative values, are frequently criticized. And while she insisted that she’s “not a snowflake,” it’s clear that the attention does take a toll.
“I’m innately a fighter, but I do question if there will be a certain time where it just won’t be worth being a Republican woman being screamed at all day,” she told Elle. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just having a bad week.”
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