Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Republican politician John McCain, had some harsh words regarding Paul Manafort, Salon is reporting. Tuesday’s episode of The View saw the hosts discussing the allegations against Manafort that he is withholding information in Robert Mueller’s investigation into a potential collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign. The official court documents claim Manafort has lied about a “variety of subject matters.” McCain believes that Manafort should face consequences for his alleged wrongdoings.
“What we do know was one of the things that got him in jail was that he was an unregistered foreign agent and he was a conduit between Russian oligarchs in Putin’s inner circle,” she said. “People that do blood money dealings like this – he should rot in jail and then rot in hell, as far as I’m concerned with Paul Manafort.”
McCain’s co-host Joy Behar attempted to bring some levity to her comments, joking that McCain “means that in a nice way.” McCain did not mince words and clarified that she absolutely did not mean that in a nice way, and that rumors surfacing about Trump potentially pardoning Manafort, as well as former national security adviser Paul Flynn, would not be an outcome she could tolerate.
“No I don’t,” she stated. “I think that, when you take blood money from foreign adversaries when you’re a United States citizen in the way that he did. The idea that he could be pardoned… it would enter us to a new level of insanity in this country, which I didn’t think I could take. He was a bad dude to begin with. He never should have been on a presidential campaign…Manafort had a reputation. I mean, he broke up his consulting firm because of it – because he was doing deals like this and having nebulous interactions.”
McCain is notably more conservative than her co-hosts and often offers controversial viewpoints that reflect more Republican values. This pattern has often been broken when discussing President Trump, however. According to BBC , her father butted heads with Trump on multiple occasions, with Trump implying that the Vietnam veteran was not a “war hero.” His daughter has been outspoken against Trump ever since.
Trump is not the only Republican politician McCain has condemned lately. She has also denounced Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who recently won Mississippi’s run-off election. Hyde-Smith has made headlines for multiple racist incidents, and McCain said that the support surrounding the senator was “deeply insensitive.” Her comments on the politician were significant, as it is not often that McCain vocally opposes fellow Republicans on the show.
