Pamela Anderson furiously defends Julian Assange during heated debate with Meghan McCain who called him a 'cyber-terrorist'
Meghan McCain, daughter of Army veteran and Republican Senator John McCain, clashed with Pamela Anderson on 'The View' after she called the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a "cyber-terrorist". The 51-year-old former 'Baywatch' star was making an appearance as a guest on the daytime chat-show. According to the Daily Mail, the tension was quite evident on the show when the conversation turned to the star's long-time friendship with Assange.
Anderson, who has consistently defended Assange in the past, told 'The View' that the Wikileaks founder's health has been "really deteriorating" ever since he was kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London to face US extradition charges in April. The last time she saw Assange was in May at the Belmarsh jail in Woolwich, southeast London after he was jailed for breach of bail conditions. Anderson told The View: "He is the most resilient person I ever met and everything that happened to him he told me was going to happen, so there's no surprises. It’s devastating that people have fallen for this smear campaign especially in America. I feel like an outsider looking in, looking at how America has embraced all this propaganda."
McCain interrupted Anderson saying that Assange was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy because he was "defecating everywhere," which did not go down well with Anderson. "That’s a smear campaign—that’s not true," Anderson retorted before asking McCain what she would do if she was "locked in a room for six years." The conservative co-host fired back saying, "Well I wouldn't be a cyber-terrorist which he is, he hacked information, his leaks included classified documents that put our national security at risk, our military and the lives of spies."
Anderson responded saying, "Do you know who put national security at risk is the military, how many people have the American Government killed innocently and how many has Wikileaks?" The actress also took to Twitter, posting a long thread that is part poetry, part rant. At one point, she references her argument with McCain saying:
"Using Julian Assange as an example is to
instill fear in real journalists.
It is the same philosophy
using innocent children locked up at the border -
taken away from their parents
as a “deterrent”.
- this is not acceptable.
This country has gone to Hell."
Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States where he is wanted for questioning over his activities with WikiLeaks. He approached the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 seeking asylum after the leaks of hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables on his whistleblowing website. The US Justice Department has reportedly indicted Assange on 18 counts that relate to his "alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States." Assange has been accused of working with former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in "unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defense."