The occasion for this squabble is the Rob Porter fiasco, which, admittedly, is a patch of comparatively solid ground on which the left might try to fight this battle. But Behar’s point isn’t limited to Portergate. She means to offer an indictment against the totality of the GOP, which is bananas. McCain gives her more than one chance to back off and deliver the perfunctory “of course I don’t mean all Republicans” caveat, but no, Joy’s pretty committed to her position. The most she’ll allow, when Meghan reminds her that Romney and Jeb Bush and her own father were also derided as racist, is that they’re not really part of the current Republican Party. She’s using “no true Scotsman” logic, in other words, to cast anyone in the GOP who’d defend Trump, on whatever grounds — Meghan McCain presumably included — as “offensive.”

I wonder if McCain considered standing up and walking out, particularly given the show’s ideological tilt. She’s a center-righty in a crowd of lefties; “Republicans are offensive” is a not-so-subtle hint to her personally that she’s unwelcome. She showed some restraint too in not retorting with a laundry list of things Republicans find offensive about Democrats, starting with their verrrrrrry belated, conveniently timed wokeness about when it is and isn’t okay for a president to sexually assault women. But then, counterattacking might have been bad form. When you sign up to be the designated Republican on this panel, you know you’re signing up to some extent to be a punching bag for a posturing clown like Behar while the audience hoots.

Now that I think about, McCain sniffing that she’s looking forward to having a thoughtful discussion about this on someone else’s show (Van Jones’s!) instead of her own is one of the more cutting things she could have said about the caliber of thought on “The View.”

And for fark’s sake, if you’re going to say something like “I’m offended by Republicans,” at least use some of the higher-caliber ammo available to you. It was less than 24 hours ago that this party’s garbage representatives in Congress proved once and for all that the tea-party era was a fraud. They don’t much care about small government, which has always been apparent, but now they no longer care about even keeping up the pretense that they care. That’s offensive and, unlike the Porter fiasco, the blame extends far beyond the West Wing. The modern GOP is built on a very lucrative lie.

Exit question, since they’re on the subject of Porter here: Are John Kelly’s enemies in the West Wing exploiting the Porter mess to try to oust him for unrelated reasons? The Kushners reportedly haven’t been thrilled with seeing their access to dad limited during office hours by the chief of staff.