Last week, after President Donald Trump got the CPAC audience to boo her father for voting against the Republican Party’s Obamacare repeal, Meghan McCain held her tongue on The View. She said she wanted to wait to address the issue with her mother and this morning they were ready to talk.
When Cindy McCain joined the show as a guest co-host on Wednesday, she began by giving an update on the health of her husband, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has been battling brain cancer for the better part of a year.
“He’s doing OK,” she said. “Chemo and radiation is a very tough customer. It does so much good, but it also does a lot of damage.” She also described her husband as “tough as a boot.”
Then, they got to the question at hand. Meghan McCain began by revealing that after a report came out that Trump was “physically mocking” her father behind closed doors, she got a personal call from the president and Melania Trump in which they attempted to clear the air—if not necessarily apologize.
“I really was under the impression this sort of fight between our families and between him and my father, especially at this particular moment, would end,” she continued. Even though Trump’s latest criticism was ostensibly about policy, Meghan called it “incredibly hurtful,” adding, “I feel, quite frankly, very naive to have believed that this would be any different.”
“You should never believe anything he says,” her co-host Joy Behar chimed in.
Attempting to shift the focus to her husband’s achievement, Cindy McCain said Trump “fails to understand” all of the positive things Sen. McCain has done for the country, even over the past year. “But more importantly,” she said, “we need more compassion, we need more empathy, we need more togetherness in terms of working together. We don’t need more bullying, and I’m tired of it!”
The feud between the two men dates back nearly three years to the moment when Trump said McCain was only considered a “war hero” because he was captured during Vietnam. “I like people that weren’t captured, okay?” Trump said at the time, hammering what many falsely believed would be the nail in his own campaign’s coffin.
“Here’s the issue with this man, his ego does not allow for someone else to have accolades,” The View’s Whoopi Goldberg told the McCains, who nodded along in agreement. “He knows that people love your dad. Whether they agree or not, people love your dad, because they know that he’s knows what right and will stand up.”