Meghan McCain said goodbye (and maybe a few NSFW words) to Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and the rest of her The View co-hosts in August after four years as the conservative voice on the talk show. “It’s been honestly the best of times and the worst of times in all ways, on and off this show,” she said in her final episode. “It’s been a really incredible, liberating experience and I will always cherish the time I spent with all of you.”
In her new memoir, Bad Republican, McCain finally explains why she decided to leave.
“For whatever reason, there’s a deep level of misogyny about the way The View is covered and written about in the media, where tabloids are always writing about the co-hosts hating each other backstage. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because the atmosphere of The View breeds drama: producers can’t control hosts, manage conflict or control leaking,” she wrote. McCain’s takeaway from her time on the show is that “working at The View brings out the worst in people. I believe that all the women and the staff are working under conditions where the culture is so f*cked up, it feels like quicksand.”
McCain also writes that after Donald Trump was elected president, “the treatment from Whoopi, Joy, and some of the staff grew meaner and less forgiving. It was as if I had become an avatar for everything they hated about the president. It felt like the co-hosts and staff only knew one Republican — me — and took out all their anger on me, even though I didn’t even vote for Trump.” Things took a turn for the worse after McCain returned from maternity leave. In a January 2021 episode, she joked, “You missed me so much, Joy. You missed me so much when I was on maternity leave. You missed fighting with me.” Behar’s harsh-but-fair response: “I did not. I did not miss you. Zero.”
Nothing anyone has ever said to me on camera since I have been giving interviews since I was 22 years old ever hit this hard. I felt like I’d been slapped. She yelled out at me sharp and intensely and I believed her. Now, I know I’m not always a perfect angel, but I would never speak to any woman that way who had just returned after giving birth. There are some things in life and some moments of time in life which are sacred. There are also times in life where you aren’t as strong as you usually are.
In discussing her decision to exit the “toxic work environment” during the pandemic, McCain wrote, “I felt like I was being disingenuous. I thought of the press I would have to do next season, the junkets. It’s all about women supporting women. I didn’t want to lie anymore. I couldn’t. I couldn’t put on the happy face after what I went through.”
You can read the rest of the Bad Republican excerpt on Variety.
(Via Variety)
