Meghan McCain appeared on “Hannity” Tuesday night to discuss the reasons behind her departure from the popular daytime talk show “The View” after four years as co-host.
With two years still remaining on her contract, McCain left the ABC Network show in July, initially citing motherhood and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted her to leave New York City for Washington, D.C. “This was not an easy decision,” she said at the time. “It took a lot of thought and counsel and prayer and talking to my family and close friends.” (RELATED: ‘I’m Just Going To Rip The Band-Aid Off’: Meghan McCain Announces She’s Leaving ‘The View’)
Now, however, she is speaking more candidly about her departure, describing the work environment as “toxic” with “direct and purposeful hostility” aimed at her. She claimed that as the “token conservative” she was treated differently.
“It’s all very personal. Being a conservative woman in mainstream media is deeply threatening. Being a woman who can hold her own on a show like that is ultimately threatening, so it became more and more personal the stronger the show got,” McCain told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
She later went on to add, “I felt like the more successful I was on ‘The View’… the worse it got for me backstage, and then ultimately it started spilling out on-air.”
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Her co-hosts allegedly told management that they did not want to work with her anymore before she announced her departure.
McCain, though not a supporter of former President Donald Trump, said later that it was “important to say there is a real trauma that is involved when you are targeted and targeted and targeted for not voting for President Obama, for being a pro-life woman, and I don’t think people who go into liberal spaces, which is basically every other space except Fox News in media, I don’t think you should be punished for it and I don’t think your personal life should be impacted and that is unfortunately exactly what happened to me.”
She credits her time at Fox News for helping her cope. “I had a sisterhood at Fox that I lost at ‘The View,’ she said. “I know what women supporting women looks like because I had it at Fox News and now I know what the opposite experience is.”
In the spring of 2019, three professors from the University of North Carolina surveyed undergraduate students to get a sense of the climate on campus. Their findings, as reported by The Atlantic, showed that nearly 68% of conservatives censored themselves while only 24% of liberals did the same.
Conservatives in Hollywood have also faced backlash for their views.
Antonio Sabato Jr. was one of the few actors who publicly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election. As a result, his career in Hollywood ended.
“I had to sell everything,” Sabato told Variety, “I had to pay all my debts. I was blacklisted.”