McCain opened up about her time on 'The View' during an appearance on the 'Reality With the King' podcast.
While Meghan McCain has said she'll "never return" to The View, there is one co-host from the ABC daytime talk show whom she still keeps in touch with. During an appearance on the Reality With the King podcast, McCain opened up about her time on the show and the bond she still shares with her former co-worker, Sunny Hostin.
"Sunny is one of the greatest TV presences in all of television. I keep telling her she should have her own show," McCain said of Hostin. "I don't know why MSNBC isn't trying to poach her for Rachel Maddow's spot."
Adding, "She's by far the most politically savvy person on that show. And extremely curious in a way I didn't find anyone else I worked with. Like, curious about different aspects of politics."
Outside of her political prowess, McCain went on to share her love and respect for Hostin, whom she called "a really good person."
"She's the only cast member I still have a relationship with," she continued. "I have such love for her and respect for her. She's a really good person and she didn't demonize me the way a lot of other people did, for whatever that's worth."
While McCain -- who famously had a strained relationship with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar -- and Hostin remain close, the Bad Republican author told host Carlos King that she no longer watches the show.
"It was a privilege to be on for four years. I have moved on. I don't watch the show at all. It doesn't really enter my lexicon that often, even just the feeds I follow on Twitter and the news I read and the pop culture I consume," she shared. "Most of the pop culture I consume, it's a lot of Housewives, so I don't watch anymore and it would be too weird to watch."
And admittedly, the TV personality said she doesn't miss being on the show either.
"I don't miss it and I think it's because I had such a hard time my last season," McCain explained. "It was a really hard time in my life. I've been really open, in my book, about what happened. I felt like I owed it to give more context to my experience. I think my experience on the show suffered a lot with COVID and Zoom. I think it's a lot easier to hate someone through a box and through a screen and to not understand where they're coming from."
When ET spoke with McCain in October, she said she doesn't have any hard feelings toward any of her former co-hosts, but she did note that Behar telling her on-air after she returned to the show from maternity leave that she didn't miss her was a catalyst for her decision to leave The View.
"I talk about the moment I decided to leave, which was the moment that I think if you're a big The View fan, you probably remember was when Joy told me she didn't miss me, and that she didn't miss me zero, and I was going through postpartum anxiety," she recalled. "I had just come back from maternity leave -- it was my second day back -- and it was sort of booked between that moment when I first came back, that happened, and then the insurrection on the Capitol happened, so it was a very, very hard week to come back from maternity leave. And I just felt in the moment ... I started crying and I had a panic attack in my office downstairs afterwards. I threw up ... it was a total mess. And I say in the book that it just was no longer worth it to me what I was giving up personally."
"I think during COVID, it was the first time that I really started thinking about my mental and emotional health, and then quite frankly, I started thinking about what my daughter was gonna see on the internet when she was grown," McCain added, referring to her 1-year-old daughter, Liberty. "And I just thought, like, I just don't think this is how women should be treated when they come back from maternity leave, and I felt also like the camaraderie on the show had dissipated in COVID because of the satellite. The fact that we were physically apart from each other really hurt the show, I mean, there's nothing anyone can do about it, obviously, but it did have an impact."
Although McCain said she asked for an apology from the show's executive producer after the incident with Behar but didn't get it, she isn't holding any grudges and added that she takes ownership of her role and moments during her time on the show that she's not proud of.
"I always really try and take ownership of my role, you know, some of the moments on the show during the four years I was there that I'm not proud of, things that happened," she also said.
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