‘I Didn’t Die!’: Inside Meghan McCain’s Awkward Exit From ‘The View’

Well, the moment has finally arrived. Meghan McCain made her final appearance on The View Friday morning and it was hard not to detect a sense of relief among her long-suffering co-hosts that it was finally over.

McCain herself seemed more subdued than usual in the pre-taped episode, hardly able to muster any outrage at all over Jennifer Aniston’s decision to end friendships with the people in her life who refuse to get vaccinated. The show saved her big send-off for the very end of the episode, after an interview with McCain’s “special friend,” Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema—whom she proudly labeled the “perfect person to represent Arizona”—and an appearance from her mother, Cindy McCain.

As Cindy explained, her late husband John McCain was “adamant” that his daughter join The View in 2017 “because he thought it would be a good format for her,” adding that it was really “his idea” that she do the show in the first place.

“As you know, we used to call her John McCain in a dress when she was little,” she continued. “So we knew she could do it and we knew she had the ability to make waves or deal with controversy, all the things that you do so well on this show.”

After thanking her mother for the kind words, Meghan joked, “I didn’t die! I’m just leaving the show. I feel like I died and this is my memorial.”

That was followed by a video tribute from her “boyfriend,” former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who praised her for speaking her mind before telling her she made the “right decision” to quit the show so she could spend more time at home with her new baby.

Noting that her departing co-host has “never been at a loss for words,” moderator Whoopi Goldberg introduced an extended montage of clips that was full of emotional moments of female empowerment but short on the nasty back-and-forth fights that defined her tenure for so many viewers.

In the end, McCain closed out her tumultuous four-year run on The View by saying it was “honestly the best of times and worst of times in all ways on and off the show.”

“It’s been a really incredible, liberating experience,” she continued. “And I will always cherish the time I’ve spent with all of you. So thank you all from the bottom of my heart and I hope that our executive producer Brian can forgive me for making his blood pressure rise for the last four years as much as I probably have.”

That line got a hearty laugh from her most frequent sparring partner Joy Behar, who along with the rest of the show’s four remaining co-hosts declined to share any warm words at all about the woman with whom they have shared the screen for the past several years.

There have been no official announcements about who will be replacing McCain when the show returns for its 25th season this fall. Fans have been pushing for the vehemently Never Trump Republican Ana Navarro.

But if The View wants to capture a shred of the outsized relevance and outrage that McCain brought on a daily basis, they will need to find a conservative pundit who is equally capable of delivering mind-numbingly bad takes and consistently driving her co-workers insane.

Anyone know what Tomi Lahren is up to these days?