It’s safe to say Meghan McCain wasn’t moved by Felicity Huffman’s letter to the judge regarding her sentencing in the nationwide college admissions scandal.
“Struggling to be a mom doesn’t mean you break the law,” the 34-year-old cohost said on The View. “So, like, I’m the only person at this table who is not a mom. I have a lot of fears about possibly becoming a mother. I don’t think that makes you bribe someone to break the law. I don’t understand the logical connection.”
McCain added that Huffman, 56, deserves to go for jail for “over a month.”
”They are the poster children for what everyone hates about white privilege,” the former Fox News contributor concluded.
Sunny Hostin agreed, noting that one month is “not too much” jail time.
“Her kid took a seat that another kid deserved and that’s the problem. She changed the life of someone else that was more deserving of the spot and I think that’s the problem,” Hostin said. “Judges know that and this judge has to send a message to the community that this is not right. She had wealth, privilege and platform and she didn’t use it appropriately.”
After Joy Behar called Huffman “entitled” and claimed she “tried to game the system,” Abby Huntsman argued that the actress handled the aftermath of the situation well.
“At least Felicity has said, ‘I made a mistake. I was wrong,'” Huntsman explained. “I’m not here to defend her at all, but there’s nothing else to say other than, ‘I want to do everything I can to help my kid. It was wrong.'”
Huffman pleaded guilty to fraud charges in May after she was arrested for paying $15,000 to enhance her 19-year-old daughter Sophia’s SAT scores. (The Desperate Housewives actress and husband William H. Macy are also parents of daughter Georgia, 17.) Earlier this month, Us Weekly obtained the letters that Huffman and 27 of her family and friends wrote to District of Massachusetts Judge Indira Talwani in support of the American Crime alum.
In Huffman’s letter, she tried to give the judge “a broader perspective and insight” into who she is “as a person and a parent.”
“In my desperation to be a good mother I talked myself into believing that all I was doing was giving my daughter a fair shot,” she wrote, explains that Sophia has learning disabilities. “I see the irony in that statement now because what I have done is the opposite of fair. I have broken the law, deceived the educational community, betrayed my daughter, and failed my family.”
The Otherhood star went on to detail Sophia’s heartbreaking reaction to her mother’s actions.
“[She] asked with tears streaming down her face, ‘Why didn’t you believe in me? Why didn’t you think I could do it on my own?’” Huffman wrote. “I had no adequate answer for her. … In my blind panic, I have done the exact thing I was desperate to avoid. I have compromised my daughter’s future, the wholeness of my family and my own integrity.”
The government recommended that Huffman be sentenced to one month in jail, by 12 months of supervised release and be ordered to pay a fine of $20,000. Her sentencing is set for Friday, September 13.
