Joy Behar and Meghan McCain Spar on The View Over Covid Relief Bill: 'Down Girl!'

What began on "The View" as a Hot Topic discussion about select Dr. Seuss books being pulled from publication devolved into a heated conversation about the political sides of cancel culture.

The subject at hand: Dr. Seuss Enterprises, founded by the author's family, deciding to take six books which included racists and insensitive images out of publication. eBay then followed the foundation's lead and pulled sales of those books from their site.

After Whoopi Goldberg explained the situation, Sunny Hostin reiterated that the books being removed had nothing to do with "cancel culture" or a left vs. right culture war and it was a decision made by the family.

She then blamed the right for making more out of the situation as a distraction tactic.

"I think this is the right trying to discourage people from really looking at what happened at the Capitol, the insurrection, I think they're tying to weave away from that," she added. "Nobody is paying attention to the hearings. I think this is one big smoke screen, this whole 'cancel culture' discussion and it certainly doesn't apply [here]."

For conservative panelist Meghan McCain, however, she felt that "sunlight is the best disinfectant" and that while books like "Mein Kampf" are "despicable, dangerous, evil," she doesn't believe they should be banned because she "always wants to learn from history."

"I'm also not a fan of censorship and I think the question for a lot of people, and I hate making it political, it's not just the canceling of Dr. Seuss, it's Mr. Potato Head, it's Pepe Le Pew, it's various cartoons and things," she continued. "Yes, we should reassess things that hurt people ... but I think there's a difference between wanting to remove a statue of Calhoun in the South, which is clearly a symbol of racism and the confederate army ... and then cartoons."

She went on to say she doesn't see the "culture war" ending anytime soon. Whoopi somewhat agreed, at least when it pertained to Pepe Le Pew -- who was scrubbed from "Space Jam 2" amid concerns the cartoon character normalizes rape culture. "I don't get it. I don't know why you gotta erase everything," she said, before suggesting the character should simply acknowledge his problematic past and change going forward.

"Nobody likes Pepe LePew anyway, he smells," said Joy Behar, before she agreed with Sunny's distraction tactic talking point.

"A lot of this pearl clutching is coming from Fox and right wing media and it's a distraction from the fact that not a single Republican in the senate voted for the Covid relief package, which is popular with 60% of Americans," she said. "That same party that voted 100% in lock step to give tax breaks to rich people. They don't want you to notice this, because it's not popular to vote against Covid relief putting food on the table of Americans who are suffering. That's what they're doing right now, that is the distraction. Let's be clear."

McCain interrupted, repeating a Republican talking point claiming only 9% of the Covid relief package goes to public health. While it's true 9% will go to testing, vaccination and jobs programs, Democrats argue the rest of the package also goes to preparing schools to resume classes safely, paid leave and other measures to support the economy, which has been affected by the pandemic, according to a Newsweek fact check.

"It's completely filled with pork and it's basically a left wing fever dream of things that are pushed into this bill along with it," McCain continued. "I think we should have that relief bill only go to Covid relief, not anything else. Only paychecks to average Americans. 9% of that entire bill is going to Americans.

"It's not because we hate poor people and we don't want people to have help during the worst economic crisis of our generation and I think that narrative and framing of it is not only wildly insulting but it’s actually inaccurate," she said.

"Over it today," she said as Joy tried to interject. "I love George Washington, over it today. Over it today!"

As Behar told her, "Down girl!", Goldberg interrupted them both and broke it up by saying, "What we’re going to do is take a break because it isn't work as well as we'd like."

That's an understatement.