On Friday, the hosts of The View (with one notable exception) celebrated when they Joy Behar received breaking news on air that Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump directed him to make contact with Russia. Of course, that piece of reporting was ultimately proved to be incorrect, and ABC News reporter Brian Ross was suspended over it.
Meghan McCain was the aforementioned exception who did not revel in the news, and as such, she got to feed her co-hosts some well earned crow on Monday morning. Although there was ostensibly no intent to mislead the public by Ross and the network issued a clarification — then a correction — to their story, McCain called the report “fake news.” She also argued that the American people should want to see Trump succeed, and not celebrate a breach of national security.
“I went to a Christmas party over the weekend, it’s no secret, most of my friends are in conservative media, I feel a lot like I’m an astronaut from another planet to come here to try to explain both worlds to each other, that’s how different I feel on this show sometimes,” she explained. “And I will say that fake news, and what we did on Friday, that’s what I was accused of being a part of,” she said, despite the fact that she was clearly at odds with the other women.
She went on to argue that the error by ABC News is a prime example of why many conservatives have a distrust in the media. Host Sunny Hostin pointed out, however, that fake news is a term that Donald Trump coined. “I think he coined it because it’s so convenient for him and people are believing it,” she said. “And I think we really need to remember that our right to a free press is not only in our constitution, it is the bedrock of our democracy.”
“When you don’t have freedom of the press, you have places like China, like North Korea, like Vietnam, like Iran, like Cuba,” she continued. “So those people that you’re referring to, I hope that they look very closely at what is coming out of this administration.” By the end of the segment though, it seemed as if the women were no closer to seeing eye to eye.