Meghan McCain is getting torn apart for her questionable take on Mr. Rogers.
According to the podcaster and former View host, Fred Rogers, the children’s television host who pushed the boundaries of kids’ content by discussing race relations, the Vietnam War, assassination, and more, was not a “political” figure.
“Wanna know one of the best things about Mr. Rogers growing up? I never knew anything about his political opinions. He just entertained kids. That’s it,” McCain posted on X.
The jab is especially pointed, as Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Accurso, has often discussed Mr. Rogers’ influence on her career as an educator.
Whether McCain made that connection is unclear, but her attempt to pit the two figures against one another drew immediate backlash on X.
Former The Intercept editor-turned-MAGA proponent Glenn Greenwald was the most well-known person to call out McCain for the post.
“Mr. Rogers was extremely political—subversively and radically so,” he wrote in response. “What this tweet claims is the completely opposite of reality.” Greenwald also pointed to the “widely watched documentary on Mr. Rogers that focuses on precisely this fact.”
Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is known for breaking stories about NSA surveillance. He’s also known for claiming to have been censored at The Intercept and for his free‑speech‑centered criticism of mainstream media—a point on which he and McCain overlap. But Greenwald did not see eye to eye with McCain about Mr. Rogers.
The documentary he referred to, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, released by Focus Features in 2018, described, through archival footage, how Mr. Rogers addressed several complex political issues through his Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood program from 1968 to 2001.
Another user pointed out that McCain was singing Ms. Rachel’s praises only a few years prior, writing that the kids’ influencer had brought her family “so much joy” and she couldn’t wait to buy tickets to a “live tour.”
McCain has often found herself in hot water over her commentary. Just Wednesday, the podcaster was under fire for another jab she made, this time at Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger, whom she made fun of for wearing an emergency escape hood during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, due to the risk of airborne contaminants and tear gas in the air.
Ms. Rachel, who has risen from YouTuber to multiplatform content star, has drawn backlash in recent months for her advocacy for Palestine. She tied that advocacy to Mr. Rogers in her Washington Post profile from July, telling the outlet, “I revere him as a saint.”
The Post notes that Mr. Rogers famously took on swimming pool segregation by inviting a Black actor portraying a policeman to share his wading pool.
“I know it didn’t feel easy to do that,” Ms. Rachel said of the TV moment, and compared it to her own advocacy. “I think, in time, what I’m doing won’t seem as controversial.”
