Meghan McCain told CNN’s Van Jones that she’s no fan of President Donald Trump but she sees “a lot of gray zone” when it comes to his supporters and argues their views should not be dismissed.
“It’s easy to get very cynical right now. And it’s easy to get very jaded. I’ve certainly found myself going to places like that, that I didn’t think I was really capable of in the past 2½ years,” McCain told “The Van Jones Show” in an interview to air at 7 p.m. ET Saturday.
“The View” co-host and daughter of Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, admitted she was “not a huge Trump supporter” but decided on Election Night in 2016 to “try and be as unemotional as possible in analyzing him and his presidency.”
“I don’t think I suffer from Trump derangement syndrome in a sense that I can separate the man from the White House. I still believe that the White House trumps — no pun intended — trumps everything politically that he’s doing,” she told Jones.
“I do think that there is a lot of gray zone with Trump supporters, and I would like both of us — myself included because I’m certainly guilty of this as well — to stop throwing around the horrible allegations and name-calling.”
Jones compared Trump’s rhetoric with the 2008 remarks of then-GOP presidential candidate John McCain, who shut down a supporter calling Barack Obama an “Arab.”
The younger McCain said she could not “go a day without someone bringing up (that) moment.”
“I was there when it happened, I remember it incredibly vividly and thinking, ‘This is a moment that you know, he’s really not going to give in to what certain advisers are telling him to,’ ” she said.
She noted that at the time “there were a lot of people really trying to get my dad to go (against Obama) with … you’re a Muslim, you’re not an American aspect of that,” but that her father had refused.
“I can remember thinking that it was a morally amazing and beautiful moment, but that maybe there would be people in the Republican Party that would be quite angry,” she said.
Asked whether that kind of courage could still be found in the Republican Party, McCain replied that she thought it simply “doesn’t win elections anymore.”
“I think about that moment and where we’re at politically a lot, and I do think that if I can go back in time, and my dad could do it all over again, and he would say, ‘Build the wall, whatever, President Obama is a Muslim!’ — all the incendiary comments that have sort of come forth — it would not be worth it. I would still say, don’t do it,” she said.
McCain said she was unsure whether “Trumpism” would continue to dominate the GOP.
“As much as I want to believe there’s this room for more independent, more moderate Republicans, I just don’t know if Trumpism is leaving any time soon, and it’s more than likely he will run for president again,” she said.