Meghan McCain Gets Schooled On The First Amendment Live On ‘The View’ Over Josh Hawley’s Canceled Book

Meghan McCain is having a rough week on The View. The daughter of John McCain is doing her best to uphold his conservative legacy but also seems to completely misunderstand what protections the First Amendment allows to citizens of the United States.

McCain has spent her week demanding that Trump voters be respected, then a good portion of them tried to overthrow the seat of government at the behest of Donald Trump. And now it seems she lacks the basic understanding of the very nation’s constitution we’ve seen seditionists try to upend in real-time on Wednesday. Thankfully, a sitting US senator was on the program on Friday and was able to explain the difference between the right to freedom of speech and how it applies to the publishing industry.

The Daily Beast had the details on Friday, sharing video of McCain learning about the Bill of Rights. The View later tweeted the video as well, as McCain asked a pointed question of Chris Murphy, a senator from Connecticut, about Josh Hawley’s book being canceled by Simon and Schuster a day after he helped incite a riot on Capitol Hill that, as of this publication, has left five people dead.

McCain called Hawley’s book being canceled “an echo of the New York Times canceling senator Tom Cotton over his national guard op-ed,” a writing the paper of record published in which a sitting senator encouraged state-sanctioned brutality against nonviolent protesters advocating for better treatment of people of color by police. Murphy didn’t hold back in responding to what’s often a common trope among the right: that being deplatformed by corporations for violent and dangerous rhetoric is somehow a First Amendment issue.

“Nobody’s robbing Josh Hawley of his First Amendment rights. He can go and speak on the Senate floor,” Murphy said. “He can go speak on a street corner. Nobody’s locking him up for saying what he thinks, for leading an insurrection against the federal government.”

Murphy noted that Simon and Schuster is a public company, and therefore Hawley’s First Amendment rights are not being infringed upon by a business decision.

“They’ve made a decision that it is going to hurt their business to be associated with Josh Hawley,” Murphy said. “You have to accept the consequences of engaging in such outrageous behavior as riling up people to march on the United States Capitol. And so if that means you can’t make money off of a book, then so be it.”

McCain, who days earlier advocated for Hawley to be the next president of the country he tried to incite a mob against, called for “unification” and asked how Murphy can help achieve that. But the senator made it clear he wasn’t the one trying to overthrow the will of the people and declare Donald Trump president after he lost a fair and free election.

“Let’s talk to Josh Hawley about that,” Murphy said. “He had an opportunity on Wednesday night to withdraw his objection. The Senate was almost burned down, and he had a decision to make afterwards. He could have withdrawn his seditional objection to Pennsylvania, he knew he wasn’t going to win, but he kept going after four people had died.

“You want to talk about bringing this country together,” Murphy continued, “Then let’s hold the people accountable.”

Murphy was asked if Hawley should resign, and he didn’t outright call for it on Friday. Others, including those in the Senate, have said just that.

Anyway, McCain sounded a bit miffed about how things went on Twitter on Friday.

Perhaps she could also look at her pocket constitution and learn a few things while she’s relaxing as well.