Between President Trump’s school violence listening session and CNN’s Town Hall with Stoneman Douglas survivors the previous day, the topic of conversation on The View Thursday centered largely around the national gun control debate, and what feasible actions we can take to protect our schools.
In other words, a calm, civil, and level-headed discussion between the panel of women, right?
Yeah, about that. After running a clip from the listening session, Sunny Hostin pointed out Trump’s remarks about arming teachers with weapons in classrooms, which McCain immediately interrupted by reading out the president’s tweets from this morning that called the reporting “fake news.” “They’re talking about people with military training, so it’s not all teachers in all schools,” added McCain.
“What he said was — because I listened to it as well,” retorted Hostin. “He said that they would train teachers in all sorts of military styles, he’s not hiring military vets, Meghan, as teachers.”
Later, after a commercial break, the fiery debate continued. “I will say this thing about the teachers, I need to emphasize this again,” reiterated McCain. “President Trump is talking about people with military experience who are comfortable with training with guns.” It’s unclear why McCain, who is not a Trump supporter, would take the president’s tweets so literally all of a sudden — especially when his logic seems flawed at best.
“Do you really think that’s practical?” asked Joy Behar. “Do you know how many schools there are in this country?” McCain was attempting to defend her position about schools needing to be more guarded when Hostin jumped back in and asked, “Can we talk about statistics for a second? Can we talk about facts?”
That unsurprisingly did not sit well with McCain, who shouted back at her co-host until Whoopi Goldberg was intervened and told everybody to take a well needed breath of air. If we can’t get five intelligent, educated women to agree on a solution, it’ll be a wonder how a divided Congress influenced by a volatile commander-in-chief is going to pull it off.