Meghan McCain on Trump CIA pick: It’s ‘psychotic’ to be OK with waterboarding

The daughter of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) tore into President Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, saying that it was “psychotic” for anyone to think that interrogation tactics like waterboarding should be allowed.

“If you are OK with waterboarding … I think that is psychotic,” Meghan McCain said Thursday. “What’s next? Are we going to be like [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] ISIS and chop people’s heads off?”

The conversation concerned President Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel.

Haspel, a 30-year career veteran of the spy agency, is facing criticism for her work at a CIA black site prison tied to an enhanced interrogation program run during the George W. Bush administration.

The senator suffered nearly six years of torture while a prisoner during the Vietnam War. 

{mosads} “He couldn’t lift me up over his head when I was a baby. He can’t ride a bike. He has more injuries that have lasted his entire life since,” Meghan McCain said on “The View.”

She said that torture doesn’t work, arguing that people inevitably break and provide false information. Her father said in the past that he falsely confessed to crimes after being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison.

“We have to be better then them,” Meghan McCain said on the talk show. 

The senator on Wednesday praised Haspel as a “patriot” but urged his colleagues to vote against her nomination.

“However, Ms. Haspel’s role in overseeing the use of torture by Americans is disturbing. Her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying,” John McCain wrote. “I believe the Senate should exercise its duty of advice and consent and reject this nomination.”

The Senate outlawed torture in 2015, though Trump has said in the past that “torture works” and he would be willing to bring back waterboarding. 

A former Fox News military analyst claimed on Thursday that torture “worked on” John McCain and said his nickname is “Songbird John.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney defended the controversial interrogation tactics on Thursday and called on the CIA to reimplement them.