While discussing the police shooting of Ma’Kiah Bryant in Columbus, Ohio that happened within minutes of the Derek Chauvin verdict, The View‘s Meghan McCain has defended the officer’s actions. Citing CNN’s Don Lemon, who also argued that the shooting was justified, McCain did her best to articulate that this situation is obviously different than the circumstances in the Chauvin case, but she also deferred to her conservative views on “respecting authority,” which includes deference to law enforcement and the military. While leaning on the footage that appears to show the 16-year-old Bryant getting ready to stab another girl, McCain launched into her defense of the officer involved and also questioned where was Bryant’s foster parents during the fight. Via The Wrap:
“I don’t know enough about police protocol, but I do know had she been able to successfully stab the girl she possibly could’ve hit an artery, she possibly could’ve killed the girl herself. I thought many things, too… I thought, where are the parents in this situation? Where was the parent to try to de-escalate the situation or the foster parent at the time, in the beginning?”
Despite defending this particular shooting, McCain made it a point to highlight that there is obviously a race problem in law enforcement. “Working on this show and experiencing what I’ve experienced over the past few years, no one without two brain cells in their head can understand that police tend to treat African Americans and people of color a different way than they do white people,” McCain said. “And it’s just a fact we’re all trying to reconcile and come to terms with.”
McCain then wrapped things up by stating that she’s even more cynical when it comes to believing accusations of wrong-doing because of… #MeToo? “This one is harder for me, and if there’s one thing I learned from the MeToo movement, it’s that I’m going to take everything by case by case by case situation and I don’t think that everything is always comparable.”