Meghan McCain had a few words for the media on Thursday when she announced her departure from ABC’s “The View.”
“This show will continue. This show will probably be on long [after] all of us are here, like when we’re long gone,” McCain said after praising the long-running panel program, her co-hosts and producers effusively for six minutes. “The media needs to do a better job of covering the women on this show in general.”
“It is not a fair fight,” she went on. “We are covered with deep misogyny and sexism by the media. If five men were doing what we do every day, I really do believe we’d probably have a Pulitzer Prize at this point. It’s always reduced to really reductive coverage and I implore the media to do better as they cover the rest of you going forward.”
McCain referenced in her good-bye the fights she tended to get into with more liberal panelists like Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, but said it was an honor to work with them. In turn, they praised her for sticking to her conservative principles and having the conviction to state her beliefs.
“On a professional note, this show is one of the hands-down greatest, most exhilarating, wonderful privileges of my entire life,” she said, calling it a “privilege” to work alongside her co-hosts, “the most talented women” in television.
Ultimately, she revealed, she wants to depart the show to spend more time with her newborn daughter and raise her after a pandemic-induced relocation.
“This was not an easy decision. It took a lot of thought and counsel and prayer and talking to my family and my close friends. Look, COVID has changed the world for all of us. It changed the way, at least for me, the way I am looking at life, the way I am living my life, the way I want my life to look like,” she said.
McCain said that when she left the “View” studio for the last time as lockdowns began, she moved to Washington, D.C., and found a great support system with which she wants to raise her daughter. She was pregnant at the time the show began broadcasting remotely and gave birth during the pandemic.
“I’ll still be here another month so if you guys wanna fight a little bit more, we have four more weeks,” she joked, earning laughter from her co-hosts.