Meghan McCain and Cory Booker Throw Down in Fiery Gun Control Debate

Meghan McCain doesn’t seem to be taking Whoopi Goldberg’s “respect” lesson to heart. On Wednesday, just one day after Goldberg’s lecture, McCain’s frustration boiled over during an interview with Democratic candidate Cory Booker about gun control. After the conservative View host called Beto O’Rouke “crazy” for supporting gun buybacks, Booker schooled her on the importance of watching “the way we talk about each other.” McCain, not one to get lectured at two days in a row, wasn’t having it. “With all due respect, guy buybacks. The gun buybacks,” she said, inciting a wild back-and-forth.

During the panel’s wide-ranging interview with Booker, McCain, an NRA member, brought up gun control. “You do support mandatory gun buybacks. When I heard you and Beto saying that, to me, that is a left-wing fever dream,” she said. “I want to know how you and Beto think you’re going to go into red states and go to my brother’s house and get his AR-15. Because let me tell ya, he’s not giving it back.” Booker insisted that he’s “not where Beto is” on this issue, which pleased the co-host. “Good, because he’s crazy,” said McCain.

“We should watch the way we talk about each other. Seriously, we can’t tear the character of people down,” said Booker, his tone shifting towards disappointed teacher. “He has no problem doing it to me! He was very nasty to me about this,” McCain said of O’Rourke. Booker then began to lecture the co-host about how they don’t need to “show the same thing back” when people are mean, but she brushed it off. “I’m not running for president, with all due respect,” said McCain. “And also, the way he talked about me inciting violence on this, I take very seriously. And I speak for a lot of red state Americans — whether he likes it, or you like it or not, there’s a lot of Republicans you’re going to have to win over.”

Booker insisted that McCain is “a voice that [he] respects and admires,” but then doubled down on her O’Rourke comment. “This is a really important issue. What we say about other people says more about us than it does about them,” he said. McCain, now fully over the lecture, was ready to discuss “gun buybacks” in earnest, but Booker wouldn’t bite. He recalled a story about someone urging him to punch Donald Trump, McCain insisted again that they switch to the discussion at hand. “With all due respect, guy buybacks. The gun buybacks,” she said.

“This is directly related to the gun buybacks,” replied Booker (it is not). Finally, after McCain pressed him to answer “semantically how you’re going to get my brother’s gun back,” he explained that there’s “an evidence-based way to accomplish this as a country,” citing removing machine guns from the street as an example. He said that McCain’s example of going into her brother’s home and stealing his gun is representative of “fear-mongerers” giving bad-faith arguments. “I’m giving you examples of how we’ve done it in the past,” said the candidate. “How Australia did it!” fired back McCain. “This is America.”

McCain and Booker’s back-and-forth continued, and after a few minutes, moderator Whoopi Goldberg had no choice but to shut it down. “Here’s the deal right now,” said Goldberg, inserting herself into the discussion. “We’ll be right back.” At that point, it was probably for the best.

Watch Meghan McCain and Cory Booker face off on guns in the clip above.

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