Meghan McCain, Ana Navarro get heated over whistleblower debate
ABC’s “The View” co-hosts Meghan McCain and Ana Navarro got into a tense dispute on air Friday during a discussion about a whistleblower in the intelligence community who raised alarms about a conversation President Trump had privately with another world leader.
In video of the exchange, McCain appears to compare the whistleblower’s efforts to raise alarms about Trump’s conversation to the actions of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, which regularly posts classified materials taken from the U.S. and other countries and in 2016 posted emails stolen from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
{mosads}“I think all interference from a foreign country in our election, all of it is bad and should be condemned and you can’t play party politics with this, and there’s a lot of people on the left who are doing that with Julian Assange,” McCain said.
“There’s a lot of people on the left that are OK with Julian Assange but aren’t OK with this whistleblower,” she added. “There are a lot of people in this country, and a lot of people on the hard left that defend Julian Assange.”
After the panel broke down into crosstalk, McCain attempted to reenter the conversation, exclaiming loudly that she may have misspoken.
“Excuse me, maybe I was clumsy in the way that I said it!” McCain interjected.
“Don’t scream at me. I’m two feet away,” fired back Navarro.
McCain could then be heard exclaiming “so rude!” as co-host Joy Behar steered the show into a commercial break.
Other video taken as the show entered a commercial break showed McCain storming off the set as the cameras panned away, prompting shocked looks from the audience captured on The View’s cameras.
McCain had returned to her seat at the desk by the time commercials ended, and the show resumed without incident. A spokesperson for ABC declined to comment on the dispute when contacted by The Hill.
Navarro and McCain have clashed in the past over support for issues such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and criticism of the media, though the two often agree on issues regarding criticism of the Trump administration.