Meghan McCain Says Calls to 'Defund the Police' are 'Equally Dangerous' as the January 6 Insurrection

Meghan McCain did not hold back on The View this morning when she insisted that the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol reflects the "dangerous" rhetoric of Americans calling to "defund the police." During a Hot Topics discussion about Tuesday's House Committee Hearing, McCain said that the riot serves as "a teachable moment" about the value of law enforcement officers, and she accused the left of "politicizing" the Capitol officers who testified before the committee. "When you're saying, 'Defund the police,' it's not just about cities," she said. "It's about places like the Capitol that are vulnerable."

While McCain's co-hosts spent the morning blasting the "unpatriotic traitors over there on Fox," as Joy Behar put it, who mocked the Capitol officers, the conservative instead offered a both-sides criticism of Tuesday's events. "It's confusing why this is being politicized because again, it's an extremely dark day in American history," she said, adding that she "can't even fathom what it would be like" to have been defending the Capitol that day. "I'm equally grossed out by anyone trying to mock the trauma of a law enforcement officer, especially because Blue Lives Matter is something that many Republicans say, and that I certainly have said and believe."

"Alternatively, I don't like people on the left politicizing these particular law enforcement officers because I can remember just a few mere months ago being told that all law enforcement were irredeemable, and that they needed different kind of training and should be defunded. And that there aren't just a few bad apples, it's an entirely irredeemable group of people working in law enforcement," she continued. "That's why we're having so many problems, particularly in Washington, D.C. to come and be recruited to join law enforcement ... because they don't feel respected, and they don't feel supported, and they don't feel like they can do their jobs."

McCain insisted that calls to "defund the police" affect various kinds of law enforcement officers, including those at the Capitol who "are protecting some of the most powerful people in all of America doing the most serious of jobs." Added the conservative co-host, "I would hope that politics on both sides would be removed from this and we could take this as a teachable moment about just how valuable police officers and law enforcement are, and that the narrative and the rhetoric of the past year has been equally dangerous."

Leave it to Whoopi to shut down McCain's argument. "I have to point my finger to the other side. This isn't about politicizing; these men and women were protecting — as I said in the beginning — both sides of the aisle," said the longtime moderator. "This is not about defunding anybody. This has nothing to do with anything but really crappy behavior by really inspired people by the guy that used to live in the White House."

"That's what this is about," she concluded. "This is not about anything but crappy behavior, and I'll say it again, on the other side of the aisle."

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Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.