Meghan McCain on Greta Thunberg Becoming the Time Person of the Year for 2019: ‘I Just Didn’t Think She Earned It’

John McCain’s daughter and co-host of The View, Meghan McCain, recently dismissed Greta Thunberg‘s Time Person of the Year achievement.

The 16-year-old, Swedish-born environmental activist started a strike at school in order to promote climate change awareness. She is especially critical of government officials that fail to act in the best interest of the planet.

During a speech at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, she emotionally said, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Currently, Thunberg is on sabbatical from school, touring the Americas and meeting other climate change activists.

This isn’t enough for McCain. She said, “I just didn’t think she earned it in the same way that the whistleblower did when it comes to influence this year.”

McCain, critiquing the award more generally, remarks, “I don’t put a lot of clout into the Time Person of the Year. Keep in mind, Hitler and the Ayatollah were also the Person of the Year.”

She refuses to badmouth Thunberg, though. “It’s hard for me to talk about Greta Thunberg because she’s 16, and I still don’t believe in attacking underaged people,” she said. “I disagree with her, I think everyone knows how I feel about climate change as religion on the left, but I’m not going to attack a 16-year-old in the same way I don’t agree with attacking Barron Trump.”

Barron’s father obviously doesn’t feel the same way. On Twitter, he responded to Thunberg’s achievement, “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her anger management problem, then go to a good old-fashioned movie with a friend! Chill, Greta, chill!”