Meghan McCain Blames The View Exit on Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg’s ‘Toxic, Direct and Purposeful Hostility’

Meghan McCain has a new audio memoir set for release later this week called Bad Republican, and according to reporting by Fox News’ Howard Kurtz, she is setting the record straight about her departure from The View.

Kurtz opened his report with breathless compliments of the daughter of Senator John McCain, calling her “defiant, opinionated, determined, contrarian, won’t be pushed around—and wants you to know it.” He also adds that “She is also at times angry, depressed, anxious, insecure, bursting with raw emotion—and isn’t hiding that either.”

But the true raison d’être for McCain’s book is summed up well by Kurtz, who writes that Bad Republican “traces her evolution from senator’s daughter and party girl to conservative warrior on The View to a humiliated panelist who quits the hit show, and serves as a scorching response to those she feels have mistreated her.”

According to Kurtz’s report, McCain blames her departure from the ABC daytime talk show on “toxic, direct and purposeful hostility” she received from Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar. According to Kurtz, she also felt “vilified by a misogynistic media that portrayed her as a quirky drama queen, fueled by nasty leaks that, perversely, only added to her fame.”

Kurtz writes:

Detractors who see her as an entitled loudmouth will find some material here, and there is ample score-settling with the men as well as the female colleagues that she believes treated her like trash.

There was “toxic, direct and purposeful hostility” from the two women, McCain writes, and it “grew meaner and less forgiving” as Trump’s tenure wore on, “as if I had become an avatar for everything they hated about the president.” And that was strange, because “Whoopi and Joy saw front and center the emotional trauma I had experienced from President Trump’s attacks on my family.”

McCain was troubled by the “open disdain” from Goldberg, who sometimes harshly cut her off on the air: “Once she turns on you, it can create unfathomable tension at the table.”

According to Kurtz, McCain also speaks of the postpartum depression she endured after giving birth to her baby Liberty with husband Ben Domenech, founder of The Federalist and Fox News contributor. While that played a significant part in her “panic attacks,” she also blamed leaks from the show in which “she was depicted as ‘crazy,’ an ‘unhinged lunatic,'” according to Kurtz.

There were several anonymously sourced reports detailing tension at The View during her time there, which was apparent to anyone who watched the show. McCain offered a confident and telegenic presence on the studio set, which often clashed with the often obstinate and condescending takes of the other panelists, particularly Behar.

The View is far less interesting due to McCain’s departure, as she is very good on television. However, it’s not clear where someone as talented as McCain will land in her next television gig, in part due to the reputation she has earned due to the very leaked stories she references, for better or worse.

Kurtz revealed much more, including a tete-a-tete with NBC late night host Seth Meyers, which you can read about in the full review on Fox News.