“The View” co-host Meghan McCain on Monday criticized her father’s longtime friend Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for standing by President Trump after Trump suggested that a group of nonwhite progressive congresswomen “go back” to where they came from.
McCain called Trump’s remarks “old, racist dog whistles” and said she was embarrassed by the lack of Republicans leaders speaking out against the president.
{mosads}“Whatever is happening to Lindsey, this is not the person I used to know,” the conservative commentator said.
McCain, the daughter of late Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), has previously described Graham as “like an uncle to me and closest to my political ideology.”
The ABC talk show host also played a 2015 clip of Graham, now one of the president’s fiercest supporters, calling Trump a “race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot” who didn’t represent his Republican Party.
Meghan McCain reacted by noting that Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who sparred with Trump during the 2016 presidential race, had a son who died in uniform and wasn’t born in this country.
The president sparked outrage on Sunday morning when he tweeted that unidentified progressive congresswomen “who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Trump did not identify which lawmakers he was referring to, but the comments were widely interpreted as targeting Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.). All four are U.S. citizens, and only Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, was born outside the U.S.
Graham lashed out at Ocasio-Cortez during Monday’s episode of “Fox & Friends,” calling the congresswoman and her colleagues “a bunch of Communists.”
“They hate Israel, they hate our own country, they’re calling the guards along our border (the Border Patrol agents) concentration camp guards,” Graham said.
“They’re anti-Semitic, they’re anti-America … we don’t need to know anything about them personally, talk about their policies,” Graham continued. “I think they are American citizens who are duly elected that are running on an agenda that is disgusting, that the American people will reject.”
Trump went on to share Graham’s message on his own Twitter account, but left off a series of quotes in which the senator encouraged the president to focus on policy.
“Aim higher,” Graham said when asked if Trump’s tweets went too far. “They are American citizens. They won an election. Take on their policies. The bottom line here is this is a diverse country.”