Meghan McCain Can't Let Go of Her 'The View' Experience and Rivalries

Meghan McCain left The View nearly two years ago, but she returned to her complaints about the show in her latest column for The Daily Mail. She is "at peace" with her time on the show, but she still feels "an uncomfortable sting" whenever another former View co-host talks about their negative experiences on the show. She was referring to Rosie O'Donnell's recent comments on Brooke Shields' Now What? podcast.

In her conversation with Shields, O'Donnell said she would never return to the show, citing how her efforts to become friends with Elisabeth Hasselbeck didn't work. "I thought we were friends in a civil kind of way and then one day on the show, she kind of threw me under the bus and I was like, 'Are you f—ing kidding me?'" O'Donnell said. "I finished the show, got my coat, walked out, and said, 'I am not going back.'" O'Donnell later said being on The View was "not the best use of my talent to get in a show where I have to argue and defend basic principles of humanity and kindness," although she didn't regret being on the series.

"Rosie said two things that immediately resonated with me when I listened to her remarks. One had to do with the topics that we were allowed to discuss on the show. The other – how people were treated," McCain, the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, wrote. "Media icon Barbara Walters co-created The View with producer Bill Geddie to be a show about real women respectfully talking about real issues. Sadly, in my experience, it never came close to that."

O'Donnell also told Shields about how she wanted to discuss the sexual misconduct claims against Bill Cosby in 2014, but Whoopi Goldberg did not. Goldberg eventually brought the allegations up on the show in 2015. This reminded McCain of her own experiences with being told to avoid topics. She claims she tried to discuss former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's blackface scandal on The View, but was denied. McCain believes this would have forced Joy Behar to talk about her darkening her skin for a Halloween costume (which was brought up multiple times on the show) and Goldberg's ex Ted Danson wearing blackface at a 1993 Friars Roast.

When O'Donnell said Winfrey was "as mean as anyone has ever been on television to me," that also clicked with McCain. "As I've written before, I struggled with my co-hosts, but when I returned from maternity and was treated horribly that was it for me," McCain wrote. "I was still reeling from a severe case of postpartum anxiety for which I had to be medicated. I had also been diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia, a condition in which your blood pressure spikes after childbirth, and spent seven days in the hospital."

"I was on The View to be the conservative voice. They must have thought that I was a Republican that they could stomach. I'm not an extremist but I do stand for conservative values and red state culture runs through my veins," McCain later wrote. "Little did The View know – it's not the Republican extremists that they hate. They hate anyone with a different point of view. It appears to have been a similar situation with Rosie O'Donnell."

McCain believes that the "only way" someone can survive on the show is if they are "vanilla pudding" and avoid saying anything controversial or voicing their "authentic" opinions. She then compared herself to O'Donnell, calling the Emmy-winning comedian "a strong, controversial woman who makes no apologies for her beliefs."

McCain and O'Donnell's tenures on The View never overlapped. O'Donnell had two, one-season stints in 2006-2007 and 2014-2015. McCain was a co-host from 2017 to 2021, leaving before Season 25 started. The show now includes Goldberg, Behar, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, Ana Navarro, and Alyssa Farah Griffin.