Meghan McCain is calling it quits at “The View.”
The controversial conservative, who has spent most of her four years on the daytime talk show being mocked or scolded by her co-stars, announced Thursday that she’ll be leaving the program at the end of the month.
“This was not an easy decision,” McCain said at the top of the show Thursday. “It took a lot of thought and counsel and prayer and talking to my family and my co-stars.”
John McCain’s daughter said that the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she left New York and went to Washington, D.C. with her husband, Ben Domenech, changed her perspective on life. Now, she said, she wants to raise daughter Liberty, who was born in September, at home.
“This show is one of the hands-down greatest, most exhilarating, wonderful privileges of my entire life,” she said. “It is a privilege to work alongside such strong, brilliant, intelligent, incredible broadcasters like the four of you. You are the most talented women on all of television.”
Whoopi Goldberg called it an “honor” when the former senator suggested that McCain join the show, which she has repeatedly said she was reluctant to do.
McCain joined “The View” in October 2017, replacing Jedediah Bila as the show’s conservative voice, and she has filled that role loudly, frequently facing off with the left-leaning hosts including Joy Behar and Goldberg.
While the sparring matches have often gone viral online, even the ABC bosses seemed to have gotten sick of the antagonistic nature the show has taken on. In late May, Kim Goodwin, the newly named president of ABC News, reportedly warned McCain and Behar to stay away from personal attacks on air after the two feuded over Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and anti-Semitism.
“Whether we like it or not, I’m not going anywhere on the show, Joy’s not going anywhere on the show, we all have to live and coexist together just like Americans right now ... but we’re all going to try and coexist and I really want to have us all move forward,” McCain told Andy Cohen on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live” in January.
On Thursday’s show, Behar credited McCain with being a “formidable opponent in many ways.”
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