Thanks to the First Amendment and a generally permissive attitude toward speech in America, it’s quite difficult to be found guilty of a speech-related offense, such as defamation or libel. But “The View” could face just such a court case over a comment made about former host Meghan McCain.
Specifically, the former co-host of “The View” is furious that current “The View” co-host Ana Navarro accused her of peddling and profiting off of her dad’s fame and family name, comparing Meghan to Hunter Biden in a desperate attempt to put Hunter Biden’s actions in context and defend the Biden family in the midst of the impeachment inquiry into Biden.
Navarro avoided mentioning the former co-host by name when making the comment, saying, “Look, did Hunter Biden influence peddle on his last name? Yes, he did. So did half of Washington. People sitting at this table did it!”
It was not immediately clear about whom she was talking, so co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin pressed her about it, following up and asking, “Who at this table peddled on their last name?” Navarro, in response, said, “I’m not talking about currently.” It then gradually hit them about whom she was speaking. “We just wanted to clear our names,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said. “Oh my God, do I have a claim to fame that I am not using?” co-host Sara Haines joked.
McCain, furious, wrote about the matter on X. She first said that they need to move on from her, saying, “I don’t understand why my former colleagues … bring me up and slander me on an almost weekly basis. It has been years – move on, I have.”
Then, she argued that she has never done any influence peddling of the sort that Hunter Biden is accused of having been up to, saying, “I have never been accused of a crime in my life and am a patriotic American – I would never and have never ‘influenced peddled’ in my life, let alone with foreign adversaries.”
Concluding, she said that the very suggestion that she was like Hunter is “absurd, defamatory and slanderous,” so she is looking into whether she can take legal action. She said, “I am no Hunter Biden. All accusations are absurd, defamatory and slanderous. I will be consulting my lawyers regarding what was libeled against me on The View this morning.”
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In a second tweet on the matter that shortly followed the first, McCain wrote, “.@TheView is an @ABC News program. I do not take it lightly when any news program suggests I engage in criminal behavior, especially as a former employee of ABC News.”
It seems likely that Navarro meant that McCain capitalized on her father’s name to become famous and a noted commenter when she would not otherwise be in such a position, rather than that she peddled influence abroad and profited off of her father’s name in that manner, as Hunter Biden is accused of doing. Watch the segment from The View here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video