Meghan McCain says any suggestion she's not still Republican is 'ridiculous'

Meghan McCain is still a Republican, thank you very much.

An interview the co-host of The View did on Saturday’s The Van Jones Show led to headlines about why she “doesn’t call herself a Republican anymore.” She has since dubbed the chatter “ridiculous” and clarified on Twitter, “I stated very clearly I am a member of the party, and vote on the republican ticket but that I put my conservative principles and worldview above all else. I was trying to explain the difference between Trump populists and classic Regan Republican.”

During the interview, McCain said she is “still a member of the Republican Party, and I vote a Republican ticket.” However, she added, “Republicanism is so tied up with being for Trump.”

John McCain’s daughter said she’s “not a ‘Never Trumper’” (“Trump didn’t melt my brain. I can still see the forest for the trees, and it didn’t expunge all my conservative principles out of me”), but that the party under Trump is “not what I recognize anymore. Its character seems to be gone. Growing up, my father was, like, militant about character. Now it seems like lying is OK. Stealing, it’s a little nebulous. I don’t think those are American characteristics. And it scares me — a lot.”

But that doesn’t mean she’s switching sides. “I’m not a liberal and I think it would be intellectually dishonest for me to go on TV and start espousing beliefs I don’t believe in,” she added.

McCain also talked about Trump’s proposed border wall — and tried to make a case for why not everyone who wants it is racist. “Sometimes I feel like when I hear, ‘Anyone who supports the wall is racist,’ it’s a trigger for me because I know people who are not racist who support the wall,” she said. She added that she tries to get people to see how it might be for someone from Arizona “who has seen the impact of illegal immigration.”

And she dislikes the belief that all Republicans are racist. “Of all the things I’ve ever been accused of, [that] is the most deeply hurtful. There was a very famous political moment in 2000 when my father was running [for the Republican presidential nomination] when Karl Rove had a whisper campaign done saying my father had an illegitimate black child, who is my sister Bridget.” Bridget McCain was adopted from Bangladesh. “So at a very young age, I had to reconcile [Republicanism and race],” she said.

As for McCain’s tenure on The View, she said it’s up when it’s up. “I’m just here to ask questions, to represent where I come from, to represent my party,” she said. “I’m here to represent my family. If people don’t like it, they can replace me. The View is a rotating seat — it’s like having a residency in Vegas.”

Reactions to McCain’s tweet clarifying her political party really run the gamut. For each one like this…

…there’s one like this:

It was a busy weekend for McCain, who also appeared on ABC’s This Week and admitted that she had underestimated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “I was one of the people that was saying that Nancy Pelosi was not the right speaker going forward, that they needed leadership change,” she said. “I’m here saying I was wrong, I completely underestimated how powerful and how strong she is.”

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