ABC’s “The View” compared Vice President Mike Pence to NFL anthem kneelers on Monday because he chose to stay seated when the Korean team was introduced at the Olympics.
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Pence chose to remain seated when the united North and South Korean Olympic team was introduced during the opening ceremony, and “The View” hosts accused him of hypocrisy because he does not support NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.
“I thought that Mike Pence said that it was inappropriate to make political statements at sporting events,” Sunny Hostin said to audience applause. “Wasn’t he that guy who walked out of the football game because people were kneeling and not standing?”
Whoopi Golberg agreed that Pence was being disrespectful and said he needed to “stand up and show respect” while in South Korea.
Meghan McCain tried to explain the difference between kneeling in front of the American flag, a symbol of the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans, and sitting for North Korea, a repressive regime responsible for some of the most wretched human rights abuses.
“North Korea is one of the worst human rights violators, it’s one of the most repressive countries, they have torture and slave labor,” McCain explained. “I gotta tell you, Whoopi, if I were there I think I wouldn’t have stood either.”
“The Olympics is supposed to be the one place where politics is not supposed to play a part,” Goldberg shot back.
McCain argued that standing for the united Korean team could have been seen as “normalizing” North Korea’s abuses and criticized the media for its glowing coverage of Kim Jong-un’s sister.
“I found it so offensive,” she asserted. “There is a grave difference between what is going on in this country… we’re not throwing people in concentration camps and feeding them to dogs.”