When Meghan McCain announced her sudden exit from The View in July, after four years as the show’s conservative pundit and with two years left on her contract, she kept her parting words cordial. “On a professional note, this show is one of the hands-down greatest, most exhilarating, wonderful privileges of my entire life.” But behind the scenes, McCain now says, she endured “plenty of shade—too much to even begin to recount—and then…more toxic, direct, and purposeful hostility.”

On Tuesday, Variety published an excerpt from her new audio memoir, Bad Republican (out on Audible on October 21), in which McCain details the “stuff that happens on The View that shouldn’t be allowed.” She talks about enduring the show’s “toxic work environment” after the death of her father, Senator John McCain, in August 2018 and the birth of her daughter, Liberty, in September 2020. (Vanity Fair has reached out to The View for comment.)

McCain, who was The View’s resident Republican after Donald Trump’s election, explains the tension she felt as his administration wore on. “As the country got worse under Trump, the treatment from Whoopi [Goldberg], Joy [Behar], and some of the staff grew meaner and less forgiving,” she says in the excerpt. “It was as if I had become an avatar for everything they hated about the president. It felt like the cohosts and staff only knew one Republican—me—and took out all their anger on me, even though I didn’t even vote for Trump.”

This animosity materialized in strained on-air interactions with Behar and Goldberg, with the latter host’s actions leaving McCain feeling “really hurt.” The host writes that when Goldberg “turns on you, it can create unfathomable tension at the table,” adding, “I found her open disdain for me more and more difficult to manage as the years went on and it became more frequent.” McCain recalls a time when Goldberg cut her off mid-debate and said, “Girl, please stop talking right now.”

McCain argues that misogynistic media coverage of The View’s cohosts is “a self-fulfilling prophecy” and that the show’s atmosphere “breeds drama.” She claims that “producers can’t control hosts, manage conflict, or control leaking,” adding, “My take on the show is that working at The View brings out the worst in people. I believe that all the women and the staff are working under conditions where the culture is so fucked up, it feels like quicksand.” McCain places blame on the network as well, writing, “ABC won’t lay down the law when it comes to conduct at The View. We’re like the network’s crazy cousin. H.R. reports seem to fall on deaf ears, starting from years before I worked there.”

The former cohost says her tolerance for criticism and chaos at The View declined after she gave birth and suffered from severe postpartum anxiety, becoming paranoid that someone would kidnap her newborn daughter. While McCain expected a warm welcome upon returning from maternity leave, she says she “no longer felt safe working at The View” after a conflict with Behar on her second day back. During an on-air argument with Behar, McCain tried to cut the tension by joking, “Joy, you missed me so much when I was on maternity leave! You missed fighting with me!” Behar replied, “I did not. I did not miss you. Zero.”

“It felt like I’d been slapped,” McCain writes, adding that it led to “uncontrollable sobbing” during a commercial break. At that point she remembers thinking, “This shit isn’t worth this. Nothing in life is worth this.” When McCain asked her executive producer for an apology from Behar, she was told not to expect one. “I never talked to Joy one-on-one again after that day,” she writes, later explaining, “After giving birth I didn’t feel like myself. I felt extremely vulnerable. Joy seemed to smell that vulnerability like a shark smells blood in the water, and she took after it. Why was this worth it to her? I will never know. But so much for working moms looking out for each other.”

Behar’s lack of apology served as McCain’s final straw. “I thought I was part of a show where women can have the kinds of conversations that society doesn’t generally make space for women to have,” McCain writes. “But for me, The View didn’t feel like a pro-women show. Soon after I returned, it hit me: I didn’t want to be a part of that, for myself, for my daughter, and for women everywhere.”

In her book, McCain advocates for ABC News to offer paid family leave to all employees, an issue she knows not all conservatives support. “Conservatives are supposed to be so pro-family, but too often their policies stop short of protecting and supporting women,” she writes, noting that she “can’t imagine what it’s like for women who are less privileged than I am.”

McCain says that while she’ll still have fond memories of working at The View, she wonders why the show is “still immune” to conversations about “dismantling toxic work environments.” In a follow-up interview with Variety, McCain confirmed that a return to the daytime show is “not going to happen” and that she’s no longer watching it, adding, “No one walks away from a giant contract like the one I had if it was good.”

— Aaron Sorkin on Scott Rudin: “He Got What He Deserves”
— The Controversy Behind the Scenes of Dallas Buyers Club
— Steven Van Zandt Talks Making, and Ending, The Sopranos
— Love Is a Crime: The Rise and Fall of Walter Wanger’s Cleopatra
— Matt Drudge’s Impeachment Debut and Strange Origin Story
— Squid Game: The Perfect Show for Our Current Dystopia
— An Oral History of Zoolander
— Which James Bond Star Is the Ultimate 007?
— From the Archive: The Epic Folly and Scandalous Romance of Cleopatra
— Sign up for the “HWD Daily” newsletter for must-read industry and awards coverage—plus a special weekly edition of “Awards Insider.”