On Monday’s The View, co-host Meghan McCain was the only host to grill Democrat guest, Senator Kamala Harris, about some Democrats calling to defund and/or abolish police departments across the country. Even though McCain pressed Harris twice to answer whether or not she supports this radical position, Harris managed to both evade giving a direct answer while at the same time, giving reasons as to why defunding police departments is a good step.
Co-host Sunny Hostin also cut in to defend defunding the police.
The other hosts did not put Harris’s feet to the fire on any issue. Whoopi Goldberg asked about Sen. Rand Paul stopping Harris’s “anti-lynching” bill, while Sunny Hostin worried that the four officers charged for murder in George Floyd’s death “would not be held accountable,” and Joy Behar wondered if Republicans would get on board with the Democrats' police reform bill that was announced today. Finally when it was Meghan McCain’s turn to question the senator, she brought up Harris’s own party seeming to embrace the far-left’s demands to defund and abolish law enforcement. She asked Harris if she agreed:
Many activists right now are calling for a defunding of the police. The Minneapolis city council just agreed on a bill on this. Right before I came to tape the show, there was a clip on CNN from a Minneapolis city councilwoman who said, quote, “it's a place of privilege if someone breaking into your home wants to call the police.” This is gaining a lot of steam. Nancy Pelosi this morning just refused to answer if she would support defunding the police. I want to know from you, do you support defunding and removing the police from American communities, and if not, why do you think there is such a hard time being differentiated right now between defunding and reforming police departments?
Even though McCain asked her if she supported defunding the police, Harris wouldn’t say yes or no. She did however, give a long winded defense for why police departments should have their funds redirected to social services instead:
So, Meghan, I think that a big part of this conversation really is about reimagining how we do public safety in America which I support, which is this. We have confused the idea that to achieve safety, you put more cops on the street instead of understanding to achieve safe and healthy communities, you put more resources into the public education system of those communities and to affordable housing and to home ownership, and to access to capital for small businesses, and access to health care regardless of how much money people have. That's how you achieve safe and healthy communities, and so we really do need to understand and re-imagine what and how we can actually make and help make communities safe…
McCain tried asking again, bringing up Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey who was jeered at by protesters after saying he didn’t agree with abolishing the police:
Senator, I hear you loud and clear, and I don't think there's any rational American right now who doesn't think we need to take a cold, hard look at reforming our police, but there was a video that went viral over the weekend of the mayor of Minneapolis being yelled at saying yes or no question, are you for defunding the police? So I'm going to ask you the same question the protesters asked him. Are you for defunding the police?
Instead of making her own delineation between abolishing and defunding, Harris said she needed McCain's definition of “defunding the police.” McCain admitted she didn’t know everything that the left's demand entailed, but assumed it was along the lines of what Ilhan Omar, and the Minneapolis City council wanted in abolishing police departments.
The Democrat senator again backed away from condemning the radical ideas being pushed by her colleagues, and repeated her argument for the “smarter distribution of resources in our country,” which was a nicer way of saying we should defund the police.
Sunny Hostin jumped in to run defense for Harris by pointing out that abolishing and defunding weren’t the same thing:
Senator, this is Sunny, and I think just to add to the conversation, defunding the police doesn't mean abolishing the police. It means taking some of those funds that are typically one-third of the budget of a city and giving some of those funds to services like mental health and education and mental health resources.
Hostin quickly asked Harris if Biden needed to pick a black female VP to close out the interview, which was another question that Harris avoided answering.
Read the transcript, below:
The View
6/8/2020
MEGHAN MCCAIN: Many activists right now are calling for a defunding of the police. The Minneapolis city council just agreed on a bill on this. Right before I came to tape the show, there was a clip on CNN from a Minneapolis city councilwoman who said, quote, “it's a place of privilege if someone breaking into your home wants to call the police.” This is gaining a lot of steam. Nancy Pelosi this morning just refused to answer if she would support defunding the police. I want to know from you, do you support defunding and removing the police from American communities, and if not, why do you think there is such a hard time being differentiated right now between defunding and reforming police departments?
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: So, Meghan, I think that a big part of this conversation really is about reimagining how we do public safety in America which I support, which is this. We have confused the idea that to achieve safety, you put more cops on the street instead of understanding to achieve safe and healthy communities, you put more resources into the public education system of those communities and to affordable housing and to home ownership, and to access to capital for small businesses, and access to health care regardless of how much money people have. That's how you achieve safe and healthy communities, and so we really do need to understand and re-imagine what and how we can actually make and help make communities safe because here's the bottom line. If you contrast, you know, many communities which are -- have a heavy presence of police to middle and upper middle class suburbs in America, you will not see that presence of police, but what you will see? You will see families who have an income that allows them to get through the end of the month. You will see good public schools. You will see people who have access to health care and can afford it. You will see people who have jobs, and to this has to be the conversation which is, how are we going to be smart in achieving what should be our collective goal, which is that all communities are safe and knowing that safe communities are usually safe because they are healthy, healthy because of a number of things including the economy, including education, including access to health care, and that's how I think about this. You know, in many cities in America, over one-third of their city budget goes to police. So we have to have this conversation. What are we doing? What about the money going to social services? What about the money going to helping people with job training? What about the mental health issues that communities are being plagued with for which we're putting no resources? And here's the other thing. When I talk to law enforcement, they know that they don't want to be, nor are they skilled to be the ones who are responding to ones with mental illness or substance abuse or the homeless population, but in many cities, that's what's happening because we are not directing those resources, those public resources to where they need to be which is addressing mental health, homelessness, substance abuse so that we don't have to have a police response because we are smarter.
MCCAIN: Senator, I hear you loud and clear, and I don't think there's any rational American right now who doesn't think we need to take a cold, hard look at reforming our police, but there was a video that went viral over the weekend of the mayor of Minneapolis being yelled at saying yes or no question, are you for defunding the police? So I'm going to ask you the same question the protesters asked him. Are you for defunding the police?
HARRIS: How are you defining, defund the police?
MCCAIN: Well I'm not for anything remotely for that. So I would ask the protesters the same thing. But I assume--and again, this is something that is new to me-- I assume it's removing police, and as Congressman Ilhan Omar said, bringing in a whole new way of governing and law and order into a community, and my understanding -- again, this is something that has just come into my understanding recently, is that you would not have police officers, like this Minneapolis City Councilwoman just said, that I would be a "place of privilege if someone broke into my home, and I wanted to call the police."
SEN. HARRIS: So again, we need to reimagine how we are achieving public safety in America, and to have cities where one-third of their entire budget is going to policing, but yet there is a dire need in those same cities for mental health resources for resources going into public schools, resources going into job training and job creation, come on. We have to be honest about this, that this is actually not a consensus around this because if there were we would actually see smarter distribution of resources in our country. To address the issues --
SUNNY HOSTIN: Senator Harris --
HARRIS: That need to be addressed. Yes.
SUNNY HOSTIN: Senator, this is Sunny, and I think just to add to the conversation, defunding the police doesn't mean abolishing the police. It means taking some of those funds that are typically one-third of the budget of a city and giving some of those funds to services like mental health and education and mental health resources, but I want to change the subject and ask another question.
