Sharing her experience. After a tumultuous time on The View ended with her departure earlier this year, Meghan McCain is getting honest about the difficult aspects of her former cohosting job.
“My take on the problems of The View are that it’s a show with a lot of demons that started in the beginning, and none of those demons have been exorcised,” McCain, 36, explained during an interview with Variety on Tuesday, October 19.
The television personality, who originally joined the talk show in 2017 for season 21, noted that “there is an expectation you won’t survive.”
“When you come in as a host, you are a rotating peg on a carousel, and you’ll be in and out,” she added. “It doesn’t breed an environment where you’re close. It feels siloed. There was no collaboration.”
Being the only conservative voice on the show was a major reason why McCain felt so isolated during her time on the Emmy-winning series.
“You can watch the show and see that it’s unhinged and disorganized and rowdy,” the Dirty Sexy Politics author continued. “I was the only conservative on the show. The third year, they ended up hiring a producer for me who was also conservative.”
Although the columnist suggested that viewers would benefit from “more balance” when it came to the cohosts, McCain revealed that she never felt like her voice was heard.
“But I also wanted to be truthful about how I felt about politics and my perspective, and sometimes those two things couldn’t coexist,” the Arizona native shared. “At a certain point, I made the decision it was more important to be honest than to be liked.”
As McCain reflected back on the experience after leaving The View in August, she admitted that she still struggles with the aftermath of participating during Donald Trump‘s time in office.
“I feel like I have post traumatic stress from having to feud with the president when my dad was dying, and then having to feud with the president after he died,” she said about being part of the show following the 2016 election. “And I haven’t fully healed.”
McCain’s comments come after Candace Cameron Bure admitted that she would find herself “crying before the show” during her time on The View.
“The stress and the anxiety — I actually have a pit in my stomach right now,” Bure, 45, told her former cohosts Sara Haines and Raven-Symone during an appearance on the “Behind the Table” podcast on October 12. “There was only one type of stress that I’ve ever felt in my life, that came from that show. And I [have] PTSD, like, I can feel it. It was so difficult, and to manage that emotional stress was very, very hard.”
The Full House alum echoed McCain’s comments, acknowledging that being the only conservative cohost added “enormous pressure” on her when it came to tackling tough topics. Bure, who joined the talk show from season 19 until season 20, used that experience as proof that “if I can do that, I can do anything.”
“I don’t know that I regret anything, honestly,” she added at the time. “I feel like there were so many wonderful takeaways from the show that as difficult as that job was, I’m very, very grateful for it. My opinion, it’s my opinion. And maybe sometimes I said things better or worse one day or another, but I don’t regret anything.”
