By Jessica Chasmar - The Washington Times - Tuesday, June 29, 2021

“The View” co-host Meghan McCain gave an impassioned rant blasting Olympic athlete Gwen Berry for turning her back to the U.S. flag on the medal stand over the weekend, saying the hammer thrower and activist is providing propaganda for America’s enemies.

Ms. McCain made the statement Tuesday morning while discussing her support for comments by Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who said Monday Ms. Berry should be removed from the team.

“I agree with him,” Ms. McCain said. “The problem I have is this woman is doing this internationally.”

Ms. McCain argued that authoritarian leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin take actions such as Ms. Berry’s to use against U.S. interests.

“He’s using the propaganda that America is an irredeemable craphole against us — saying, ’You think your country’s so great over there? Look at BLM, look at everything that’s happening in your country, you don’t even treat your people correctly’ — at the same time, while he’s literally imprisoning people,” she said. “And we’re having our enemies and [propagandistic] dictators using our own propaganda against us, which, in turn, turns into a real national security risk.”

Ms. McCain went on to lament that her deep feelings of patriotism are no longer socially acceptable in today’s political climate.

“For some reason, my relationship with the flag isn’t allowed anymore — my love of the American flag, my love of the national anthem,” she said.

Ms. McCain recalled a story that her late father, Republican Sen. John McCain, used to tell her every Christmas about a fellow prisoner of war he knew in Hanoi named Mike Christian, who sewed the American flag into the inside of his prison garb so he and his cellmates could secretly recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day — that is until the North Vietnamese prison guards found the flag and “beat the living crap” out of him.

“Do you want to know the first thing Mike Christian started doing?” Ms. McCain continued. “He started re-sewing the American flag into his prison garb so his cellmates could say the Pledge of Allegiance and remember what they were doing and what they were fighting for in prison for America.

“So excuse me if I don’t think some of these athletes are representing America in the same way,” she said, getting visibly heated. “And for some of us, I will die for this. I will die on this hill that it is not appropriate or patriotic to go to a foreign country where you’re supposed to be representing America and act like it’s just about you. It’s not about you, it’s about all of us.”

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg responded by incorrectly claiming Ms. Berry is a U.S. military veteran.

It’s actually Ms. Berry’s father who is an Iraq War veteran and who previously spoke out in support of his daughter’s protests in 2019 after she raised a clenched fist during “The Star-Spangled Banner” after winning a gold medal at the Pan American Games in Peru.

On Saturday, Ms. Berry turned her back on the American flag and held up a T-shirt that said “Activist Athlete” during the national anthem after her third-place finish in the women’s hammer throw at the U.S. Olympic track-and-field trials in Oregon.

After facing considerable backlash for the protest, Ms. Berry issued tweets ripping her critics as “obsessed” with her and declaring “people in American rally patriotism over basic morality.”

Ms. Berry said her protests are meant to represent those “who died due to systemic racism.”

• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.

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