Meghan McCain directly called out The View‘s new “joke” of a conservative host, who replaced her five years ago.
“I’m gonna say something that’s a little nasty,” McCain, 41, said of her former TV show in a new episode of her podcast, Citizen McCain. “The person they replaced me with is a joke. She is in no way representative of conservative women.”
After four tumultuous years on The View, McCain, the daughter of former senator John McCain, vacated her seat on the panel in 2021, citing a “toxic” work environment.
In need of a replacement conservative to maintain the show’s “balance,” The View brought on Alyssa Farah Griffin, Donald Trump’s former White House director of strategic communications, to fill her seat.
“It’s been a wildly disappointing experience for me to see what legacy I helped do during the four years there while my dad battled brain cancer and I had not one, but two miscarriages while I worked there,” McCain continued during her conversation with conservative influencer Isabel Brown, who just had her own spat with the program.
“The show has only won an Emmy twice in its history—one time is when I was there, for Best Political Show," McCain incorrectly declared.
The View has won more than 30 Daytime Emmys, many for Best Talk Show—though none for McCain or for the Best Political Show category, which does not exist.
After apparently forgetting Griffin’s name, calling her “whatever,” McCain praised Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who guest-hosted during Griffin’s maternity leave, for her staunch conservative voice.
“She was great, and she was really strong, and she fought for a lot of the things that I fight for,” McCain said.
McCain has been in a yearslong feud with The View that began while she was still co-hosting the show. After leaving, McCain torched The View for lacking a true conservative voice.
“It is actual malfeasance on the part of ABC news that there isn’t one single conservative woman on The View this morning who voted for Trump or simply isn’t repulsed by his supporters to explain to America why he is still so popular,” she wrote on X in 2024.
Though a former member of the Trump administration, Griffin, 36, was highly critical of Trump’s re-election bid and even revealed that she voted for his 2024 opponent, Kamala Harris.
Criticism notwithstanding, McCain herself has stated that she did not vote for either candidate in the presidential election. Instead, she said she wrote in her late father’s name.
