Former The View host Meghan McCain once again railed against her former co-hosts during a recent chat with conservative Isabel Brown, who was recently the center of discussion during a tense Hot Topics debate. Except this time, she took aim at her conservative “replacement” on the show, Alyssa Farah Griffin.
McCain revealed that she was asked to help search for her replacement when she exited the ABC talk show in 2021. But she also rattled off a series of claims about the show that are rather inaccurate.
“The other thing is, when I left The View, the executive producer said, ‘I want you to help me help pick your [successor],’” she said on a recent episode of her podcast Citizen McCain, before adding, “The show has only won an Emmy twice in its history — one time is when I was there, for Best Political Show,” per Entertainment Weekly.
The View has won over 30 Daytime Emmy Awards since its 1997 premiere, with wins for hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sherri Shepherd and Barbara Walters for Outstanding Talk Show Host. McCain was nominated alongside her co-hosts five times but did not win a Daytime Emmy during her time there.
McCain revealed she suggested several possible options she “thought would be great.”
“You need someone who’s a real one,” McCain noted. She pointed out that she didn’t want the show to hire on “fake people who once voted for President Bush in the early 2000s and now hate everything” about Republicans.
The podcast host then set her sights on Griffin, who previously worked as a political strategist and former White House director of strategic communications during President Trump’s first term. McCain admitted she wanted to “say something that’s a little nasty.”
“The person they replaced me with is a joke. She is in no way representative of conservative women,” she said. “It’s been a wildly disappointing experience for me to see what legacy I helped do during the four years there while my dad battled brain cancer and I had not one, but two miscarriages while I worked there.”
McCain criticized Griffin for admitting she voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and not President Trump. “How is that representing conservatives?” she said.
But McCain did have praise to share for Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who has proven to be divisive on the show. “She was great, and she was really strong and she fought for a lot of the things that I fight for,” she said of Hasselbeck.
The former host’s criticisms of the ABC talk show did not stop there. Brown complained that she couldn’t get booked on the show ever since the hosts criticized her for “encouraging” Gen Z women to have “more kids than they could afford before they think they’re ready” at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
“The idea that a woman could be pro-life is beyond anyone at that show’s comprehension,” McCain commented.
The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.
