Video of Capitol riot shown at Trump impeachment trial 'literally took my breath away': Meghan McCain

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Conservative "The View" co-host Meghan McCain said Wednesday that video of last month's Capitol riot that was played at former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial "literally took my breath away".

"I started crying again," she said. "It's like revisiting trauma. I have been so intensely and deeply impacted by what happened on Jan. 6 for a variety of reasons, and I think all Americans are."

Trump, who was impeached on Jan. 13 on a single article of inciting an insurrection, is the first president to stand trial before the U.S. Senate after leaving office. On Tuesday, Democratic impeachment managers played a 13-minute video splicing Trump's rhetoric about having the election stolen by Joe Biden and urging his supporters to fight with violent footage of the riot.

Trump's defenders have said the proceedings are illegitimate and insist that the former president never urged his followers to commit acts of violence.

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McCain, the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said she was moved by impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin's remark that his daughter did not want to return to the Capitol after the events of Jan. 6.

"I, too, don't want to go back to the Capitol right now, and I was literally raised going to the Capitol my entire life," she said.

McCain added she was particularly struck by Trump's rhetoric about Vice President Mike Pence at the rally on the day of the riot. Trump urged Pence to "come through" and reject presidential electors Trump viewed as fraudulent, although the vice president did not have the authority to do so. Pence, who was presiding over the certification, had to be evacuated from the Senate chamber when Trump supporters breached the building, and some of the rioters could be heard calling for his hanging.

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"Words have ramifications," McCain said. "It's like something out of a dystopian, science-fiction movie."

Trump's acquittal appears certain, with 44 out of 50 Republicans voting Tuesday that the trial itself was unconstitutional. McCain often clashes with her liberal co-hosts, but she agreed with them in calling for Republicans to convict Trump and bar him from holding office.

McCain added that Republicans were trying to strike a balance between rebuking Trump and not abandoning the former president entirely due to his base of support, but had sharp words for former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who criticized Trump's rhetoric about a stolen election but told Democrats to "give the man a break" and skip impeachment.

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McCain called Haley's comments "the most disgusting language I've ever heard."

"It's hard for me to give President Trump a break when our vice president could have been killed because of the things he was saying," she said. "I would love to see more Republicans come out and do the right thing ethically, but politics is going to come in the middle of this."