Meghan McCain Chided by Cory Booker for Calling Beto O'Rourke 'Crazy' on 'The View'

Sen. Cory Booker‘s visit to The View saw a larger debate about how to reduce gun violence turn into a mini-debate with co-host Meghan McCain about how to talk about other people.

On Wednesday, the 2020 presidential hopeful stopped by the daytime talk show, where he got into a one-on-one with McCain, 35, during a discussion about proposed gun buyback programs.

When Booker said his stance on the topic differed from competitor Beto O’Rourke‘s, McCain replied with, “Good, because he’s crazy.”

“We should watch the way we talk each other,” Booker, 50, told her. “Seriously, we can’t tear the character of people down. We have different beliefs, that doesn’t mean one person— ”

McCain cut Booker off, saying O’Rourke “has no problem doing it to me. I mean, he was very nasty to me about this.”

She was apparently referring to O’Rourke’s reaction to McCain previously suggesting that there would be “a lot of violence” if the government made people give up their guns in a buyback.

“I think that kind of language and rhetoric is not helpful,” O’Rourke, 47, told The Daily Beast in September. “It becomes self-fulfilling; you have people on TV who are almost giving you permission to be violent and saying, ‘You know this is, this is going to happen.’ ”

“But you and I both know that just because somebody does something to us doesn’t mean we show the same energy back to them,” Booker told McCain on The View on Wednesday, to which she replied: “I’m not running for president, with all due respect.”

“The way he talked about me ‘inciting violence’ on this, I take very seriously,” McCain said, adding, “There’s a lot of Republicans you’re going to have to win over.”

Booker distilled his admonishment with one sentiment — “What we say about other people says more about us than it does about them” — before McCain steered the conversation back to the debate of firearms.

McCain had more to say on Twitter after she was criticized for her line of questioning, writing, “At least Beto is honest about the fact that he wants to take our guns away.”

A day earlier on The View, moderator Whoopi Goldberg halted the show to tell McCain, who joined the show full-time two years ago, to “exhibit respect” when talking about each other.

“It is The View. You know what, let me tell you something about The View,” Goldberg, 63, said on Tuesday’s episode. “This show has always had the ability to have different points of view, which we respect around the table. And when we talk to each other, we also exhibit respect. So when I’m saying to you, ‘Hold up, because we’re not hearing each other,’ I’m not trying to cut you off — I’m trying to get you heard.”