Meghan McCain revealed the reason why she left The View.
The former host claimed that she felt her colleagues mistreated her because of her conservative views and it happened while she was having postpartum depression.
She mentioned in her new audio memoir entitled “Bad Republican”, as obtained by Variety, “You can’t imagine how it messes with your self-esteem working in an environment where the worst thing you can be in the world is a Republican during the Trump years. As the country got worse under Trump, the treatment from Whoopi, Joy and some of the staff grew meaner and less forgiving.”
She continued, “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.”
The 36-year-old former host said that Whoopi Goldberg, 65, had supported her when she started on The View, before she turned on her.
She wrote, “The thing about Whoopi, though, is that she yields so much power in culture and television, and once she turns on you, it can create unfathomable tension at the table. I found her open disdain for me more and more difficult to manage as the years went on and it became more frequent. Occasionally, if the show’s political discourse veered into territory that she found disagreeable, Whoopi would cut me off, sometimes harshly.”
Further, she felt that Joy Behar, 79, criticized her. She explained, “After my dad died, I heard Joy had told others at ‘The View’ that she couldn’t understand how I could still defend Republicans after everything Trump had done to me. Why was that something she had to worry about? I could separate the two. I could separate Trump from being a Republican.”
According to McCain, she was able to endure everything at work until she gave birth to her daughter, Liberty, in September last year. She was on maternity leave for three months and had postpartum depression. Her condition and her co-hosts’ actions made things harder for her.
“As I was dealing with my own emotions, I couldn’t also navigate the idea that I was hated and felt hated at a toxic work environment,” she said.
Once, she got into a squabble with Behar on air. She said, “To make light of things and to ease the tension, I said, ‘Joy, you missed me so much when I was on maternity leave! You missed fighting with me!’
“’I did not,’ Joy answered. ‘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,” McCain explained. “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.”
During the commercial break, she cried and started lactating. She said, “I was embarrassed and shaking. I felt like I wasn’t in control of my body. I didn’t want millions of viewers to see that. That experience of crying and leaking and trying to pull it together in seconds so I could go back on-air with women who appeared to hate me was an intensely heartbreaking experience.”
She realized then that “this s–t isn’t worth this,” and that “Nothing in life is worth this.”
According to the former host, the bigger issue based on her experience is how women are treated in their workplace.
She said, “I want ABC to change. But I want change in America too, starting with giving pregnant women paid maternity leave. Corporations should not be allowed to say, “We support women, blah blah blah, but if you have a baby, we’re not going to support you. These companies spend millions of dollars a year trying to convince consumers of their high moral values, but how many of them actually walk the talk? It needs to change.”
As reported earlier, Ryan Reynolds decided to take a break from movie-making.
