“When I first joined The View in 2017, I felt a connection to Whoopi [Goldberg],” writes Meghan McCain in her new audio memoir, Bad Republican, according to the excerpt published by Variety. Meghan, 36, said that Whoopi, 65, had “made a promise to my father [John McCain] that she would look after me, and she kept her word for the first two years that I was on the show.” However, Meghan claimed that about halfway through her four-year run on The View, things changed. “The thing about Whoopi, though, is that she yields so much power in culture and television, and once she turns on you, it can create unfathomable tension at the table.”
Meghan claimed that Whoopi had “open disdain for me” during the show. “Occasionally, if the show’s political discourse veered into territory that she found disagreeable, Whoopi would cut me off, sometimes harshly. Once, in the middle of a heated debate on live TV, Whoopi singled me out and said, ‘Girl, please stop talking right now.’ It instantly trended on Twitter. And it really hurt.” Hollywood Life has reached out to Ms. Goldberg for comment on Meghan’s remarks.
The conversation Meghan brought up happened during the Dec. 16, 2019, episode. Meghan and Sunny Hostin were having a heated moment discussing Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings. When Whoopi, the show’s moderator, tried to move the program onto the next segment, Meghan continued to talk. This prompted Whoopi to tell Meghan to “please, stop talking, right now.” Meghan, shocked, said in a huff, “I won’t talk for the rest of the show.” “I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that! If you’re going to behave like this. You’re talking over people,” said Whoopi while Meghan continued to talk over her.
Meghan, in Bad Republican, also noted that there was another interaction between her and Whoopi that damaged their friendship further. “Another time she answered something I said by blurting out ‘O.K.’ in a tone that declared she was both baffled and disgusted by what I had just said,” said the daughter of the late U.S. Senator. “This reaction also went viral and left a scar on our relationship.”
That conversation, as Vulture noted, came from a March 2021 episode, where Meghan went into a rant involving Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle, and Meghan’s now-Daily Mail coworker, Piers Morgan. “I want to take this time to encourage all Americans to visit Mount Vernon and see why monarchies are stupid,” Meghan said. “The American experiment is the way to go, and if we have two American women — Meghan Markle and Oprah Winfrey — who are single-handedly finishing what George Washington and our revolutionary counterparts did, I’m all for it.”
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“Day after day, week after week, these things take a toll,” Meghan said in her memoir. “You can’t imagine how it messes with your self-esteem working in an environment where the worst thing you can be in the world is a Republican during the Trump years.” McCain said that she felt like the co-hosts and staff “only knew one Republican — me — and took out all their anger on me, even though I didn’t even vote for Trump.”
“Bad Republican” is available on Audible on Oct. 21.