Meghan McCain has some major “regrets” about the aftermath of her late father’s diagnosis, she shared on Thursday amid continued calls for Mitch McConnell to share “proof of life” with the public.
The former co-host of The View followed up an X post in which she’d allegedly “made fun” of McConnell’s disappearance from public life after an apparent medical emergency by divulging that she wished she’d urged her father, then-Arizona Senator John McCain, to step down when he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2017.
“I also have a lot of regrets, almost a decade since my dad’s passing,” she wrote.
“My family should have forced him to step down the second he was diagnosed,” she posted. “Which is why I’m now an advocate for age and term limits in politics. I also sincerely hope Senator McConnell is OK.”
The former The View co-host wrote the post in reply to Josh Holmes, a Republican political strategist and McConnell’s former chief of staff, who had blasted one of her now-deleted posts about McConnell, 84.
“You know, I don’t remember anyone from the McConnell family making fun of your dad when he was absent from the Senate for the final 8 months of his life in a two-seat majority,” Holmes wrote.
John McCain served in the Senate for 13 months after he was diagnosed with glioblastoma. He remained active in the Senate until his death on August 25, 2018.
McCain may have started out making light of McConnell’s disappearance from the public eye, but she wrote in a tweet that remains on her account, “In all seriousness, Senator McConnell’s staff owes it to the American public to give a real update on his health or show us some kind of proof of life. All of this is unseemly, macabre, bad for democracy, and quite frankly embarrassing for the country.”
The Kentucky senator reportedly went into cardiac arrest at his home in Washington, D.C. on June 14, according to a 911 call obtained by independent journalist Desirée Townsend. He has not been seen or heard from publicly since.
Calls for proof that he is still alive and well enough to serve have grown louder with each passing day, even as some conservative lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Whip John Barrasso, and former McConnell aide Scott Jennings, claim to have communicated with him since his medical emergency.
McCain’s former The View colleague, Whoopi Goldberg, joined those calls on Wednesday’s episode, when she declared there was a simple way to “shut everybody up” about whether or not McConnell was healthy.
“Why don’t they just FaceTime him?” Goldberg said before quipping, “And if you don’t know how to FaceTime him, get somebody young to show you what to do!”
