Meghan McCain Flubbed Some Poll Numbers on Meet the Press, Then Tried To Clean It Up in the Most Nonsensical Way Imaginable

Michael LucianoSep 27th, 2021, 5:45 pm
 

On Sunday, Meghan McCain made her first TV appearance since leaving The View, as she joined Meet the Press and made a false claim about the polling on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. That in itself is unremarkable, but the way McCain responded after being fact-checked on Twitter was utterly nonsensical.

McCain, of course, is the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and has mysteriously landed a series of high-profile writing and television gigs.

On Meet the Press, McCain slammed Biden’s agenda as “not polling well” and is even “cratering.” She expressed confusion as to why many Democrats insist on enacting the policies, which are currently in the form of a large budget reconciliation bill before Congress. But in fact, it has polled well consistently. One survey from last week shows 66% of Americans support Build Back Better.

“The Build Back Better agenda is the most progressive modern agenda of all time, up to $5 trillion, and it’s not polling well,” McCain claimed. “So I think, I’m just confused as [to] why they’re doubling down on something that is cratering in the polls right now.”

McCain referenced no polls in particular, nor was she asked to cite any by host Chuck Todd, who invited her on the show because reasons. Her point went unchallenged.

Not only that, the Meet the Press Twitter account uncritically tweeted her false claim:

The tweet was absolutely hammered by replies from people pointing out that McCain’s claim simply wasn’t true.

As Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin replied, “It is polling well.”

Faced with this reality, McCain had three choices:

  1. Acknowledge her mistake
  2. Say nothing more on the matter
  3. Attempt to execute a Jedi mind trick in which she tries to convince people she’s actually right.

Door number three, whaddaya got?

What?

It’s true that Biden’s approval numbers have seen better days. Based on a 538 aggregate of polls as of this writing, he has just a 45% approval rating.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say Biden’s numbers are even worse, like Bush-at-the-end-of-2008 worse. What should he do to win more people over?

Well, according to self-appointed political strategist Meghan McCain, the answer is nothing. By her logic – if it can be called that – if Biden (or any other president) has poor approvals, then he shouldn’t enact policies that have high approvals because he himself is unpopular. Her reasoning seems to be that if an unpopular president does something, no matter how popular that thing is, then said thing will ipso facto be unpopular because the president himself is unpopular. In this paradigm, not only is there seemingly no way a president can improve his poll numbers, he shouldn’t even try to improve them.

It goes without saying that just because legislation is popular, doesn’t mean it should be passed. McCain is more than welcome to argue against the bill on its merits and any concerns about inflation, taxes, and so forth. But she opened the door on the polling and clumsily so. McCain should own it.

As for Chuck Todd, he should also own his own failure to push back on McCain’s statements, as well as his show’s amplification of them on social media without critical evaluation.

Watch above via MSNBC.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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Michael Luciano - Senior Editor

Mike is a Mediaite senior editor who covers the news in primetime. Follow him on Bluesky.