Meghan McCain Slams Republicans For Liz Cheney Vote on ‘The View’: “Just Doing it For Power”

Meghan McCain couldn’t hide her disappointment in her political party on this morning’s episode of The View, bashing Republicans for voting to oust Rep. Liz Cheney from House Republican leadership. In response to the congresswoman losing her post after denying the 2020 election was rigged, McCain admitted she was “having a hard time” with the morning’s news.

The conservative co-host pointed out that while Cheney has a “hyper-conservative” voting record, her replacement, Rep. Elise Stefanik, is “much more centrist and mushy in the middle politically.” Sharing a “throwback” with viewers, McCain recalled a photoshoot for Elle Magazine’s ’30 Women at 30′ in which she was photographed alongside Stefanik, then the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. While she was in awe of the young politician then, she’s since changed her views.

“At the time, I can remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, she’s so impressive, this is so exciting,'” McCain said. “And then … to see this turn, where a woman who is generations older than me, Liz Cheney, is fighting for what I believe to be the future of the party, and Elise Stefanik, a woman who is a millennial and is my age, who is doubling, tripling, quadrupling down at the altar of Trumpism.

“I think that’s what’s most disappointing to me in all of this, is that my generation of leadership is also failing us,” she continued. “If you just look at numbers and stats, we are bleeding millennials. It’s a joke. So the idea that a millennial woman would know that and then still continue to double down in this way, I don’t understand it.” What McCain suspects as a main motivator for those in her party is power, which she described as “the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

Power is “the ultimate antidote” and “the opiate of the masses,” McCain added. “People in D.C., it is their heroin,” she said. “Apparently, power is better for some people than being able to sleep at night with what you believe and actually think. I don’t believe that she actually believes what she’s saying. I think she’s just doing it for power, and that is, for me, the saddest moment of this morning.”

In a rare moment on The View, McCain and co-host Joy Behar seemed to find common ground on today’s news, both siding with Cheney. Earlier in the show, Behar compared the congresswoman to “the Joan of Arc.” But don’t expect Behar to make a big shift to the right — soon after praising Cheney, she added, “Why anyone is a Republican at this point is something I cannot fathom.”

The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC. Watch McCain’s comments from this morning’s show in the video above.

Where to watch The View