‘The View’ thought it found a GOP ‘unicorn’ to replace McCain — but she’s an anti-vaxxer

Meghan McCain | Lou Rocco/ABC via Getty Images

On Monday, POLITICO’s Playbook reported that ABC is having a hard time finding a conservative host to replace Meghan McCain on The View. The problem? It’s become impossible to find a modern conservative who won’t go on the air every weekday and try to kill thousands of Americans and/or Western democracy.

The Republican Party ain’t nothin’ but a death cult these days, and it turns out that searching for the least unreasonable Branch Covidian still leaves one bereft. You’d think it would be easy to replace Meghan McCain—her currently empty chair already makes more sense than she does. A monkey who only occasionally flings poo would be an upgrade, too—but she’d have to be a Republican, and everyone knows that poo-flinging monkeys skew Libertarian.

The latest update to this saga? ABC apparently had a new conservative host in its sights, but she refused to get vaccinated, and so the Disney-owned network is back to square one—searching for that rare cryptid in the Republican Party whose knee has never bent to the shambolic mound of offal who oozed its way into every nook and crevice of the West Wing during the Great Tribulation.

Fox News contributor Lisa Marie Boothe interviewed with ABC News and The View executives earlier this year, a source close to Boothe told The Daily Beast. Those conservations ended, this person with knowledge of the situation said, after the conservative pundit made clear to the network that she will not get any of the required jabs against the coronavirus.

An ABC News source confirmed to The Daily Beast that the network had conversations with Boothe, among “dozens and dozens” of candidates. The show never had an opportunity to offer her a guest-hosting spot or book a potential date. And once Boothe’s stance on vaccinations became apparent, the source said, further conversation became a “moot point” and a “non-starter” due to the network’s strict policies.

Aw, man. What a bummer! I’m sure an unrepentant anti-vaxxer would have been exactly the kind of measured, reasonable voice they’re searching for.

Now Disease-Vector Dorothy Parker has lost her seat at our modern-day Algonquin Roundtable.

ABC News’ parent company, the Walt Disney Co., currently requires all U.S. employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. And New York City, where The View tapes its episodes before a live studio audience, now mandates vaccines for all private-sector workers. Fox News requires employees at its NYC headquarters to be vaccinated. Boothe, who is currently based in Miami and revealed this week that she tested positive for COVID-19, did not respond to requests for comment.

She tested positive, huh? Unfortunately, she’s still probably shedding both virus and egregious nonsense.

In October, Boothe claimed that her refusal to take the COVID-19 was “a giant middle finger to Joe Biden’s tyranny.” I can sympathize with that courageous stance because it’s exactly the attitude I took toward cruciferous vegetables when I was seven. “Fuck you and your broccoli, lunch ladies! Tater tots in me tot-hole! Now!”

She also recently wrote a column for Newsweek titled “Why I’m Not Vaccinated.” I honestly didn’t know it was that easy to get published in Newsweek, but now that I do, I’ll be certain to FedEx them my magnum opus, “Why I let two fruit bats chew off my nipples,” tout de suite.

Anyway, here’s the sort of erudition The View is missing out on as a result of its benighted vaccination “rules.”

“The vaccine helps protect the vaccinated from dying, but it does not protect the vaccinated from either getting or spreading COVID. In other words, it seems clear to many of us that the vaccine is a personal health benefit, not a public health benefit. Therefore, whether to get vaccinated is a profoundly personal decision, not a public health decision. And not everyone is high-risk.”

Yeah, that was never true, and it still isn’t. But it was really untrue on Nov. 15, before the emergence of the wily omicron variant.

Strangely enough, that’s exactly when Newsweek published this paean to pestilence.

For the record, here’s the CDC’s guidance on this: “[A] growing body of evidence suggests that COVID-19 vaccines also reduce asymptomatic infection and transmission. Substantial reductions in SARS-CoV-2 infections (both symptomatic and asymptomatic) will reduce overall levels of disease, and therefore, SARS-CoV-2 virus transmission in the United States.”

Also, why the fuck would you denigrate a vaccine that you admit “helps protect the vaccinated from dying”? Because the virus is survivable for you? Don’t be so sure, Lisa; and here’s hoping you don’t get long COVID. Or steal a hospital bed from someone who’s living responsibly.

Boothe, of course, is apparently the sort to take joy in her failure to launch herself into Meghan’s bad hair chair.

Of course, ABC’s big fool’s search may go on indefinitely, because the parameters The View’s producers have set for their “reasonable Republican” are nearly impossible to meet.

Sources close to the show said that the search has stalled as executives struggle to find a conservative cast member who checks all the right boxes. They will not consider a Republican who is a denier of the 2020 election results, embraced the January 6 riots, or is seen as flirting too heavily with fringe conspiracy theories or the MAGA wing of the GOP. But at the same time, the host must have credibility with mainstream Republicans, many of whom still support DONALD TRUMP.

“The problem is that they bring people on under the mantle that this woman is a conservative, when they’re ‘Never Trump,’ so they don’t represent the country,” said one of the rotating guest hosts.

“They are really looking for a unicorn,” said a former show staffer. “They want someone who is going to fight — but not too hard, because they don’t want it to be ugly and bickering.”

A unicorn? Maybe Kim Jong-un can help them out. Surely Donald Trump still has his number.

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