Guest View Panelist Morgan Ortagus Attempts Throw Down With Rep. Adam Schiff

It was a rough morning for Morgan Ortagus as the former Trump administration State Department spokesperson tried to make her mark on the second day of her two-day on-air tryout for The View’s fifth seat.

First, Whoopi Goldberg managed to mangle Ortagus’ introduction for the second day in a row, asking for help pronouncing her last name. Ortagus responded with good cheer, saying “as long as you remember me, Whoopi, I don’t care what you call me.” 

The Republican national security expert kept to the party line through Hot Topics, expressing compassion for the position Aaron Rodgers finds himself in after lying about his vaccination status, and both-sidesing Rep. Paul Gosar’s outrageous anime video of himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

But Ortagus clearly had her knives sharpened when Adam Schiff joined the panel later in the show and she confronted the House Intelligence Committee chair over his past promotion of the Steele Dossier, whose primary source was indicted last week for lying.

View co-host @MorganOrtagus confronts Adam Schiff on the Steele dossier: “You may have helped spread Russian disinformation yourself for years by promoting this.” pic.twitter.com/hjiRml78ZH

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 9, 2021

The California representative defended his committee’s work, calling it “proper” to have investigated various claims that members of the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, saying that anyone who lied should be prosecuted — and “unlike in the Trump administration,  if they’re convicted, they should go to jail, not be pardoned.”

“And let’s not forget what we learned in that investigation,” Schiff continued. “We learned that the Trump Campaign Chairman, Paul Manafort  was giving campaign polling data to Russia intelligence , while Russian intelligence was helping the campaign—”

Ortagus interjected “—to be clear, he was fired halfway through the campaign.” 

“He may have been fired,” Schiff responded, “but the effort to get Russian help continued.”

Ortagus then returned to Schiff’s own “culpability” for promoting the Steele Dossier, to which he responded “let’s not use that as a smokescreen to somehow shield Donald Trump’s culpability for inviting Russia to help him in the election, which they did, for trying to coerce  Ukraine into helping him in the next election, which he did, and [for] inciting an insurrection, which he did. None of that serious misconduct is diminished by the fact that people lied to Christopher Steele.”

“No, I think just your credibility is,” Ortagus responded. 

“Well, I think the credibility of your question is doubt,” responded Schiff to a round of applause from the audience.

Better luck next time?

Jed Rosenzweig is the Founder and Publisher of Primetimer.