Who protests the protestors? Meghan McCain, that’s who, as The View host slammed U.S. Olympian Gwen Berry, who turned her back on the American flag while the National Anthem played at the Olympic trials on Saturday (June 27).
“Excuse me if I don’t think these athletes are representing America in the same way, and for some of us, I will die for this,” McCain said during the Hot Topics segment on today’s show. “I will die on this hill. It is not appropriate or patriotic to go to a foreign country where you’re supposed to be representing America and act like it’s just about you. It’s not about you. It’s about all of us.”
Berry, who finished third in the hammer throw at the trials, thought track and field organizers were going to play the anthem before she and the other two top finishers reached the podium. Instead, “The Star-Spangled Banner” played while they were on the podium. So Berry, who had previously protested in 2019, turned away from the flag while holding a T-shirt reading “Activist Athlete.”
After her 2019 Pan American Games protest, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee revised guidelines to allow for peaceful protests. The IOC, meanwhile, placed Berry on probation for a year and cost her sponsorships.
But this week, Republicans in Congress have called for Berry to get thrown off the team entirely. After The View played a clip of Congressman Dan Crenshaw calling out Berry, Sunny Hostin wished Crenshaw showed the same energy in denouncing the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol or for supporting investigations and prosecutions into it. Joy Behar encouraged Berry, saying “protest is the very nature of patriotism.”
As for McCain?
“I’ve spent the last year and a half hearing every argument possible, and understanding why athletes protest in the United States of America. Like Colin Kaepernick,” McCain said. “The problem I have is this woman is doing this internationally. And if anyone just saw Vladimir Putin’s recent speech when he met with President Biden, he’s using the propaganda that America is an irredeemable craphole against us, saying: ‘You think your country’s so great over there? Look at BLM. Look at everything that’s happening in your country. You don’t even treat your people correctly.’
“At the same time where he’s literally imprisoning people. And we’re having our enemies and propagandic (sic) dictators using our own propaganda against us. Which, in turn, turns into a real national security risk.”
“I don’t understand why we can’t all have shared experiences in this space, or have our own stories, because for some reason, my relationship with the flag? Isn’t allowed anymore. My love of the American flag, my love of the National Anthem. And I know it’s very triggering for people. People get very upset when I talk about my dad, for whatever reason. Which is why I’ve really stopped doing it on the show, unless it’s really meaningful to me.
“But when I was growing up, every year on Christmas, he would tell me a story about when he was in prison being tortured. And his cellmate, a man named Mike Christian, had sewn the American flag using scraps of material he found in prison into his prison garb. Every morning, they would say the Pledge of Allegiance to what was sewn into his prison garb. One day his Vietnamese captors found that and beat the living crap out of Mike Christian…and the second that he was able to move again. Do you want to know the first thing that Mike Christian started doing?”
Why yes, he did sew a new American flag to pledge his allegiance to, in case you were wondering.
Sara Haines defended Berry by pointing to the athlete’s history and her upbringing studying the Black American experience. When people focus on protest, Haines said, “they need to focus more on why they’re doing that,” adding: “Gwen Berry is representing her country.”
And Whoopi Goldberg suggested The View someday play the entire song of “The Star-Spangled Banner” so everyone can decide whether it’s truly a great song worth saluting.
On Twitter, the reactions were swift and merciless to McCain:
Will this garner further protest from McCain about the protest against her protesting Berry’s protest? Stay tuned.
