Meghan McCain Lost Her Mind Over This Conversation With Donald Trump
For fans of "The View" and politics junkies alike, it's been well-established there's no love lost between the McCains and the Trumps. Though the family members and offspring of former President Donald Trump might be a comparatively recent addition to the list of prominent Republicans, their loyal, vocal contingent has aided in cementing their reputation as far-right upstarts. On the other hand, the McCains, under their late patriarch Senator John McCain, have been movers and shakers within the GOP and beyond for decades. They've also been ripe for ridicule at the hands of the Trump family, thanks to McCain's reputation as a war hero, his comparative willingness towards bipartisanship, and the celebrity of daughter Meghan McCain as a former "View" host.
But despite the well-covered dislike both families have for each other, it seems that in the early days of the Trump presidency, a personal call made to Meghan herself attempted to change the narrative — or, according to Meghan, might have been a half-baked attempt at gaslighting. In an October exclusive with DailyMailTV (via The Daily Mail), she recounted a bizarre phone call Trump placed to her after mocking her father publicly for the first time as a newly-elected president. To no one's surprise, it aided little in changing her opinion of him.
Meghan McCain said Donald Trump's phone call was 'bizarre'
As Meghan McCain recalled during an October 19 DailyMailTV interview while promoting her upcoming audio memoir "Bad Republican," Donald Trump purportedly attempted to reach out to McCain after Trump, then a newly-elected president, privately ridiculed her father Senator John McCain's status as a Vietnam veteran and his war injuries from his years-long imprisonment at a POW camp. As the tabloid noted in their reporting, Axios journalist Mike Allan was the first to break the story in 2017. (According to Allan, Trump targeted McCain's limp, which he sustained during a plane crash; Trump had previously, publicly mocked this in 2015 while deriding McCain's status as a war hero, per ABC News.)
After Meghan McCain tweeted her outrage over the incident, the former "View" host recounted receiving a call from "this weird number that I didn't answer," along with "a voicemail that said, 'this is the White House. President Trump would like to speak with Miss McCain.'" Her reaction? "I lost my mind," she said. She immediately called her father, informing him that she found the prospect of speaking to Trump "scary" and her reluctance to do so. After the senator convinced her otherwise, she eventually dialed Trump back. The result, per McCain, was "a very bizarre conversation," in which Trump "denied making fun of my dad's war injuries," blaming it on "fake news." Tellingly, McCain added, "he didn't apologize," and accused Allan of fabricating the incident.
This isn't the first tepid Trump-McCain apology
Donald Trump's attempt at damage control through his 2017 phone call with Meghan McCain didn't end there. As McCain said during her DailyMailTV interview, Trump yanked a seemingly reluctant first lady Melania Trump on the line to express her family's adoration for the McCains, which Meghan herself dismissed mise en scene. However, for Meghan, the president's words ultimately rang hollow. It was later discovered Melania was in agreement with Trump's opinions on McCain — a rare occurrence indeed. And, after Senator John McCain's death from brain cancer in 2018, Trump was not invited to his funeral and had to be convinced by his daughter Ivanka Trump to lower the American flag at half-mast in honor of the late congressman.
In somewhat of an out-of-character move, Trump's eldest scion and ingratiating namesake Donald Trump, Jr. somewhat apologized to McCain for his father's previous and posthumous disparagement of the senator during a 2019 appearance on "The View." (Notably, the apology was made while Don Jr. was advertising his 2019 book "Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us".) After Meghan lambasted Don Jr. on-air for his family's continued, public belittling of veterans and their families like hers, per HuffPost, asking him if it made him "feel good," he replied, "I don't think any of that makes me feel good." He quickly added "I'm sorry about that and [our fathers] did have differences," before continuing to defend his father's actions.