Saying her goodbyes! Meghan McCain will leave The View at the end of season 24, she announced during the Thursday, July 1, episode.
“This is going to be my last season here at The View. I will be here through the end of July to finish out the season,” the TV personality, 36, said during the episode. “This was not an easy decision. It took a lot of thought and counsel and prayer and talking to my family and my close friends.”
She added that COVID-19 has changed everything for her, and she’s loving living in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Ben Domenech, and daughter, Liberty.
“I feel like this is just the right decision for me at this moment, and I just want to thank all of you,” she said. “I’m eternally grateful to have had this opportunity here. So seriously, thank you from the absolute bottom of my heart, and I will still be here a month, so if you guys want to fight a little bit more, we have four more weeks!”
McCain, who joined the talk show as a conservative voice in October 2017, has faced many rumors about wanting to exit the show.
In 2019, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that producers viewed McCain as “their most relevant star,” which meant she was treated differently than the rest of the women at the table. “She often feels like she’s painted as the villain in the media. [She’s treated] with kid gloves — partly out of respect for who her father is, partly because she can be a difficult talent to manage and it’s not worth the drama,” the source said at the time.
Less than a year later, a separate insider added that the Arizona native was “a lone wolf” at the show and behind the scenes, it was “difficult to produce the show because of the tensions and division.”
At the time, a third source added that moderator Whoopi Goldberg had a messy relationship with the Dirty Sexy Politics author.
“It has been really hostile between Whoopi and Meghan all season, and neither one of the ladies cares to hide their feelings,” the insider shared. “The negativity has been present since last season and it trickles down to the staffers that work with them.”
During Thursday’s show, she raved about the moderator and the panel of the show, calling them the “most talented women on television.”
After welcoming her first child in September 2020, many thought she would exit after her maternity leave. Instead, she returned in January, rejoining Goldberg, 65, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines at the table.
“It’s been such a rough reentry back into The View,” she said during a January episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen following her maternity leave. “I had a really hard birth … I had a really hard time getting back to work. I thought I’d be back by the election. So just, like, that process of getting back was a lot, and this past week back, with just the show the way it is and obviously everything going on in the country and the horrible, horrific attack on our Capitol — it’s just been a lot.”
She added that she “missed the show,” and reminded viewers that no matter what, the cast is “a family” on and off the sow.
“All these women were at my dad’s funeral. We’ve been through a lot of s–t together, and I missed being on the show,” McCain shared at the time. “I hope that we can all be examples, myself included, of where the country should go forward. Because whether we like it or not, I’m not going anywhere on the show, Joy’s not going anywhere on the show — we all have to live and coexist with each other, just like Americans right now, which is a little deep for an answer, but we’re all gonna try to coexist and I really wanna have us all move forward.”
