Meghan McCain, a conservative co-host of "The View," accused President Donald Trump of "weaponizing" her late father's legacy in the wake of reports that the White House had instructed the U.S. Navy to obscure the warship USS John S. McCain ahead of the president's visit to Japan.
"The president' actions have consequences. And when you repeatedly are attacking my father . . . it creates a culture in the military where people are clearly fearful to show my father's name in one way or another. That is what started this chain of events," McCain said Thursday morning on the talk show.
The vessel in question was named after the father and grandfather of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, a celebrated American war hero who has repeatedly drawn Trump's ire. The senator's name was added to the ship in 2018.
Trump denied he had anything to do with the reported directive to move the naval vessel out of his sight, although he also said the White House official who coordinated such efforts was "well-meaning."
The president added that he was "very angry" with the late Republican senator, because of his vote to narrowly defeat a so-called "skinny" bill that would have repealed part of Obamacare in 2017. Trump emphasized he was not a fan of the Arizona senator in "any way, shape or form," in part because of his support for the invasion of Iraq. Still, he said, his animosity toward McCain did not mean he would ever ask the Navy to move a ship.
Meghan McCain claimed Wednesday that she has received a lot of criticism in the media "across the board" over "how often I speak of my father, how I grieve, how I do it publicly."
However, she argued that “it's impossible to go through the grief process when my father, who has been dead for 10 months, is constantly in the news cycle, because the president is so obsessed with the fact that he is never going to be a great man like he was."
"It's a bizarre way to grieve. It's a bizarre way to say goodbye to my dad," she admitted, before accusing Trump of "weaponizing" her father's legacy.
Meghan McCain also made an emotional plea to the media to have "more compassion."
"This is very hard. I try to put on a game face every day, and I try and be as stoic as possible but grief is tricky . . . And when Trump is doing this, it makes it that much harder," she said.
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