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Meghan McCain had some choice words for journalist Katie Couric following her recent comments about Trump supporters.
McCain pointedly told Couric and those who agreed with her to "go to hell" for saying Trump supporters are in a "cult" and need to be "deprogrammed."
McCain's comments came during a segment on The View, of which she is a co-host.
In the segment, McCain and her co-hosts discussed the continued hold Trump seems to have on the Republican Party.
They attempted to touch on the ways that is manifesting in a bitter division within the government that has already, less than a week in, slowed down new Democratic President Joe Biden's legislative agenda.
McCain went on a lengthy rant about how she expected the government to unite following Biden's election, blaming Democrats for the division.
"I had sort of assumed after President Biden won that the feeling of unity and coming together would be something that would be happening — that Democrats would be wanting Republicans to come together with them to go forward."
McCain seemed unaware it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are acting to slow down the legislative process on pressing, life-or-death issues like the ongoing pandemic.
As evidence of the Democrats' supposed fault for the divisions in Washington, McCain then cited comments Katie Couric made during a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher about Trump's die-hard supporters.
McCain said:
"Instead, we're hearing a lot of language from people like Katie Couric that Republicans like me need to be quote, 'deprogrammed,' that we're 'brainwashed.' That 74 million Americans are basically irredeemable people that we don't need to communicate towards and we don't need to, in any way, have anything to do with."
That is, however, not what Couric—who is not a Democratic member of Congress or a party official—said to Maher.
Rather, Couric directed her comments toward the cohort of die-hard Trump supporters whose unwavering support is unaffected by his illegalities, legislative failings and outright lies, such as the ones about election fraud that inspired the Capitol insurrection he incited on January 6, which resulted in five deaths.
As Couric put it to Maher:
"Some [Trump supporters] are believing the garbage that they are being fed 24/7 on the internet, by their constituents, and they bought into this big lie. The question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump."
The word "some" alone makes clear Couric was not even speaking about all Trump supporters, let alone all Republicans.
And McCain—who made it seem like she voted for Trump given her defensive comments—was outspokenly critical of Donald Trump all the way back in 2015 when he launched his first campaign. So it would seem she is not among the people to whom Couric's comments made reference, but of course pretending all Republicans were the target and attacking Couric makes for better TV.
On Twitter, viewers were not at all appreciative of McCain's latest rant.
For their part, McCain's co-hosts all but ignored her comments, with moderator Whoopi Goldberg simply responding, "Cool, ok" to McCain's rant before moving the conversation to a new topic.