“The View” invited MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to share her take on the much talked about impeachment inquiry against against President Donald Trump. On Thursday, Meghan McCain was eager to regurgitate right-wing talking points, particularly about Rep. Adam Schiff and the whistleblower complaint.
Maddow was discussing impeachment when McCain touted a theory popular among conservatives that Schiff (D-Calif.) knew about the complaint beforehand after a staffer alerted him to it.
“This was blowing up all over Twitter yesterday, at least conservative Twitter,” McCain began. “It turns out that Adam Schiff knew about the whistleblower complaint in advance, and the whistleblower spoke to a House aide about it, and then the aide told Schiff.”
“Even if that’s standard practice, when Schiff was recently asked directly, he said, quote, ‘We’ve not spoken directly with the whistleblower,’” she added. “Now, that’s a lie, and I keep saying that Adam Schiff is the wrong person to do this because if we are going to go forward with impeachment, it needs to be as clean and look as nonpartisan as possible.”
McCain, 34, went on to question if Schiff’s supposed early involvement was another “misstep” for Democrats looking to boot Trump from office. Maddow said it wasn’t and patiently explained why McCain’s concern was misplaced.
“He didn’t speak with the whistleblower, no,” she said of Schiff, adding that “whistleblowers come forward all the time to the House Intelligence Committee, which is run by Democrats, and to the Senate Committee run by Republicans, and they say this happens all the time. We always do the same thing. We have them speak with a staffer, and then the staffer tells them to get a lawyer and file a whistleblower complaint. On the House side, they say this happens two or three times a month. This is a normal thing.”
McCain continued harping on the matter, however, and criticized Schiff’s characterization of Trump’s call to the Ukraine as a parodied “mafia-style shakedown.” Co-host and fellow conservative Abby Huntsman said she was equally turned off by the language and argued Schiff was one of the main Dems caping for Trump’s impeachment.
Maddow pushed back against the assertion, saying: “He actually was reticent on impeachment as the head of the Intelligence Committee, he’s been very much in the public eye on this stuff, but he hasn’t been one of the people pushing for it.”
Huntsman agreed Trump’s request to for Ukraine to dig up dirt on political rival Joe Biden was an impeachable offense worth investigating, but asked the political pundit whether she felt she contributed to the “crying wolf” and outrage fatigue over Trump’s scandals.
“I think it’s a very good point,” Maddow responded. “That’s what happens when you have a scandal-ridden presidency with stuff that happens all the time, that any other presidency, would have already led to impeachment.”
The MSNBC host then pointed out that the president had committed an impeachable offense just hours before when he admitted to his dirty deed with Ukraine call during a press conference on the White House South Lawn.
“Did this happen on the call?” she added. “Was it hearsay? Who was the whistleblower? He has just admitted to it on the South Lawn. You don’t need an inquiry.”
Watch more in the clip below.
