Meghan McCain said Wednesday that some Republicans appeared to be making political calculations rather than moral calculations regarding the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
McCain mentioned former Ambassador the United Nations Nikki Haley specifically, saying that she believed Haley’s calculations were likely based on a potential 2024 presidential run. (RELATED: ‘They Can Go To Hell’: Meghan McCain Says She Doesn’t Need To Be ‘Deprogrammed’ Because She’s Conservative)
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“It’s kind of like, other than the play, Mrs. Lincoln, how did it go last night? Is that the joke? You know what I’m saying, Whoopi. I just — it’s just a dumpster fire,” McCain said in response to the number of Republicans who were still voicing opposition to Trump’s second impeachment.
“I will say that, you know, politics unfortunately should be about making moral calculations, but a lot of times it’s about making political calculations,” McCain continued, adding that she felt Haley was doing the latter.
“She’s clearly betting on the fact that Trumpism is here to stay, and she wants his base of supporters because she’s clearly running for president and thinks she’s a front-runner,” McCain said. “I’m sure there are people like Kristi Noem who will have something to say about her being a front-runner.”
McCain went on to argue that the best currency a candidate could have was authenticity — something she said that both President Joe Biden and Trump had — and that she thought there were a number of Republicans who were trying to capitalize on Trump’s base without necessarily believing in what they were saying.
“A lot of these people are trying to sell Trumpism, but it just doesn’t work and it’s not totally believable. That’s Josh Hawley’s problem. He’s an Ivy League-educated Constitutional scholar trying to go to the floor to put something forward that I don’t really believe he believed, and now he’s sort of in political purgatory,” she added.
McCain concluded by saying that political calculations didn’t always pan out and there was always the possibility that a dark horse candidate could come out of nowhere and win it all.
“My favorite part of American politics is the element of surprise,” she said, adding, “I wish I would see people on Capitol Hill in my party that were being authentic and saying what they actually felt instead of trying to get the Trump supporters, because I do think with real leadership and real authenticity and real ideas and grassroots movements, people will follow. People will follow. You don’t need to imitate something that has been shown to be — I wouldn’t go so far as to say a cataclysmic failure, but not too far away.”