MSNBC host Rachel Maddow defended Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff on “The View,” saying Thursday that she didn’t have a problem with his use of “parody” in a congressional hearing.
Maddow explained that Schiff was simply offering up a “characterization” of what the tone of the call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must have been like.
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Meghan McCain was the first to raise a concern, saying that Schiff’s use of parody in a serious congressional hearing actually took away from his credibility. “Can I follow up quickly though because the catalyst for this was when he was talking about parody. He was making a parody,” she said.
“Oh, in his opening statement?” Maddow asked. (RELATED: Schiff Clarifies His Fabricated Account Of Ukraine Transcript By Calling It ‘Parody’)
“Yeah. I think again, I want this to be taken as seriously as possible because I want conservatives to understand, at least for me, this is very — this seems extremely serious. When he says it’s a parody, that doesn’t make me take what he’s saying seriously,” McCain explained.
“He was making the point that this was like a mafia-style shakedown … He’s making those comments in his opening statement in the context of everybody having the White House notes on the call. So everybody knows what’s on the call. He’s characterizing it to say, as a former prosecutor —” Maddow argued.
“Do you think it’s appropriate?” McCain asked.
“It sounds like a mafia shakedown. That’s the point,” Maddow replied.
“Why the parody when the call speaks for itself?” Abby Huntsman jumped in. “That was my problem in all of this … I’m with Meghan. Turns people off. He’s a partisan.”
Despite Schiff’s admission that his initial characterization of the call was not accurate and was intended to be “parody,” a number of outlets ignored that admission and aired his statement anyway.