‘The View’: Meghan McCain Accuses Google of Being “Okay With Antisemitism” After Diversity Head Controversy

Meghan McCain is sounding off on Google’s pick for the company’s head of diversity, Kamau Bobb, after a 2007 blog post he wrote began making the rounds online. During today’s episode of The View, McCain tore into the company for hiring Bobb after it was revealed that he once wrote, “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself,” in a post about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“If you’re a Jewish employee of Google I can’t imagine how you feel right now,” McCain began. Pointing to the “events of the past few weeks,” which have included “huge rises in antisemitic hate crimes,” McCain said, “it’s very strange to me that Google — who espouses itself to be the most progressive, the most inclusive company on planet Earth or in Silicon Valley — that you have a head of diversity who, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it looks like you probably hate Jews or at the very least, have some serious issues with your antisemitic rhetoric.”

The conservative co-host went on to profess her exhaustion “with having the conversation over and over again about why antisemitism is the last passable form of bigotry in the United States of America.” She added, “All of our ancestors weren’t out fighting Nazis to have this subtle antisemitism start seeping its way back into the American public’s lexicon, which is what’s happening right now. We all know where that leads: it leads to the extermination of Jewish people.”

Before closing out her comments, McCain addressed Google directly. “I implore you, you should at very least be putting out a statement, because if they said this about Black people, or they said this about Asian people, or they said this about LGBTQ people, he would be fired already, and he is not, which says that Google is okay with a little bit of soft antisemitism.”

In response to McCain’s comments, co-host Sunny Hostin insisted they should apply context to Bobb’s post. “We need to put his words in context because what he was discussing in this post in 2007 was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” she said, before adding that the show needed “experts in this field” when tackling the complicated topic.

“He was discussing the Israeli government’s actions. I don’t know if criticizing the Israeli government is by definition antisemitism. That is something that I think an expert in this area can address,” Hostin continued. “In criticizing the Israeli government, he argued that Jews should be tormented by the country’s actions because Jewish suffering — in particular, the Holocaust — should theoretically give Jews more human compassion.”

She added, “Given that background, I think that we should all be very careful in saying that he should be summarily fired, in saying that Google didn’t do their job.”

The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC. Watch this morning’s discussion about Bobb’s post in the video above.

Where to watch The View