Meghan McCain erupted in anger at Katie Couric telling her to “go to hell” after the former “TODAY” host made “condescending” remarks about many Americans she claimed are “brainwashed.”
Katie Couric was the target of backlash over remarks she made during an interview with Bill Maher. It was reported that Couric’s remarks came off as “elitist” and “condescending” when she went on a rant explaining she supported former President Donald Trump’s impeachment and Twitter ban.
However, what really caused Couric to come under fire was when she took aim at Americans who had voted for Trump. “It’s really bizarre, isn’t it, when you think about how AWOL so many of these [GOP] members of Congress have gotten,” Couric told Maher. “But I also think some of them are believing the garbage that they are being fed 24/7 on the internet, by their constituents, and they bought into this big lie.”
Katie Couric then took aim at people who voted for Trump. “And the question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump,” she added. Meghan McCain had heard enough and blasted Couric. “I had sort of assumed after President Biden won that the feeling of unity and coming together would be something that would be happening — that Democrats would be wanting Republicans to come together with them to go forward,” McCain said.
“Instead, we’re hearing a lot of language from people like Katie Couric that Republicans like me need to be quote, ‘deprogrammed,’” she continued. “That we’re ‘brainwashed.’ That 74 million Americans are basically irredeemable people that we don’t need to communicate towards and we don’t need to, in any way, have anything to do with.”
McCain continued her disagreement with Couric’s remarks. “I think it’s horribly dangerous for the country, and I also think it’s horribly dangerous for Democrats,” she added. “Because if you don’t care about unity, you should care about the politics of this. Right now, there is a vacuum to pick up the four people, the four in 10 Republicans who feel very disenfranchised.”
“I don’t need to be deprogrammed!” concluded McCain. “I just have a different perspective on how the government should be run.” Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A Jacobson told Fox News that “threats of ‘deprogramming’ Trump supporters have become “common among liberal journalists.”
“Katie Couric making such offensive comments comes as no surprise, she is part of a media complex that deliberately stifled the flow of information negative to Biden in order to interfere in the election,” Jacobson said. The Hill columnist and Fox News contributor Joe Concha made a similar observation of a growing trend among members of the media who have called for “deprogramming and silencing 75 million Americans.”
“This sort of rhetoric from Couric — which comes across as so condescending and elitist — underscores the divide between our media, which primarily resides in New York and Washington, and the rest of the country, which is moderate to center-right per multiple polls. And it’s why the industry is so mistrusted and frowned upon,” Concha told Fox News.
NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham also weighed in. “Katie is ‘retired’ from any ‘objective’ news duties,” he said. “She has been a partisan for a long time.” Graham pointed out Couric made a similar pitch back in 2009 to then-Republican Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, who she urged to be a “hero” by siding with Democrats in order to pass Obamacare while reciting a bizarre Christmas-themed poem on CBS Evening News advocating for the liberal legislation.
This wasn’t the first time Couric has made controversial remarks. Back in 2016, the journalist admitted to deceptively editing a focus group of gun rights enthusiasts for her pro-gun control documentary Under the Gun, which omitted responses to her question about how felons or terrorists could be prevented from purchasing a gun without background checks. Their answers were replaced with several seconds of silence, portraying the group as ignorant of the subject.
