The audience for the left-leaning daytime talk show The View cheered criticism of Beto O'Rourke on Monday arguing that he benefitted from a media double standard for male candidates.
Conservative co-host Meghan McCain blasted the ex-Texas congressman and 2020 presidential candidate for his "Jack Kerouac road trip" following his loss in 2018 to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas).
"What bothers me the most of all the coverage of the candidates so far–and I know you like him—but Beto's coverage infuriates me on an almost-daily basis," McCain said to her fellow hosts. "No woman could ever lose running for Senate and then go on a Jack Kerouac road trip, abandoning his wife and kids finding himself, then do an announcement on the cover of Vanity Fair. That's what he did."
O'Rourke, a progressive darling and considered a top 2020 contender following the close defeat in Texas, wrote Medium posts describing his feelings as he traveled around the country, at one point saying he was in a "funk."
Although the trip and his musings were panned at the time, O'Rourke got a glossy Vanity Fair cover when he reversed himself and decided to run for president, telling the liberal magazine he was "born" to run for president.
McCain said a female candidate like Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) or Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) saying they were "born to run" would have been "lambasted in the media," leading to applause from the left-leaning audience.
"If you have children as a woman," host Whoopi Goldberg chimed in, "you can go, but no one will understand."
"You're a grown-ass man finding yourself after you ran? I don't understand it," McCain said to more cheers. "I never get applause, so clearly people are agreeing with me."
Goldberg said women can't "get up and just leave your kids."
"They don't care if you find yourself if you have kids," she said.
"There is no finding yourself," co-host Abby Huntsman said.
"You find your kids, that's what you do," Goldberg said as the crowd laughed.