Finney, a former head of communications for the Democratic National Committee and a former press secretary for Hillary Clinton, was invited on Hewitt’s show to discuss her statement that Senator Ted Cruz’s attacks on Obamacare are reminiscent of the “fear stoking” of Joe McCarthy, who she said “also wanted to take his country back. Then, it was from the Communists, who had supposedly infiltrated it.” She said that while Cruz was focused on a different issue his “rhetoric sounds eerily the same” as McCarthy’s. …

Hewitt tried for several more minutes to engage Finney on the issue. “This is astonishing. You can’t bring yourself to say that Alger Hiss was a Communist spy,” he concluded. He then posed it one more time, whereupon Finney hung up on him. “She can’t deal with that question. I am flabbergasted, I am astonished,” Hewitt concluded. “She has a show on MSNBC called ‘Disrupt’ and she can’t handle a little tiny question about Alger Hiss.”