Meghan McCain is recalling her time on The View and says she feels validated after listening to Rosie O’Donnell saying she wouldn’t return to the talk show either.
“Rosie O’Donnell and I probably don’t agree on much. But here we’re in sync. There is nothing on God’s green earth that could convince me to ever walk on to that set again,” McCain wrote in her Daily Mail column.
McCain was responding to O’Donnell’s appearance on the Now What? with Brooke Shields podcast where the Now and Then star Whoopi Goldberg squashed certain topics from being discussed on the air, like the sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby.
Although McCain says she’s “always hesitant to rehash” her experience on the show that “ended in a complete disaster” she wrote in her column that she “was also pushed off topics that I thought were newsworthy by show producers.” McCain mentioned that she was also denied talking about the scandal that Democratic Virginia Governor Ralph Northam faced after photos from a 1980s yearbook surfaced that showed him in blackface.
“It was a subject that millions of Americans debated around watercoolers at the office and picnic tables at backyard barbeques. But we weren’t allowed to talk about it because of Whoopi and Joy Behar,” McCain wrote. “Around the same time as the revelation about Northam, an old picture emerged showing Behar wearing makeup to darken her skin for a Halloween costume in the 1970s. Behar even boasted about the image in a resurfaced 2016 segment, saying she dressed up as a ‘beautiful African woman.’”
McCain also noted that talking about the subject would also link back to Goldberg’s ex-Ted Danson in blackface at a 1993 Friars Club roast.
O’Donnell also mentioned the animosity between the co-hosts being a reason she wouldn’t return. McCain likened that to her own experience on the ABC talk show with her fellow panelists was not good.
“On my second day back, Behar told me on camera and in front of the entire world, ‘that she didn’t miss me one bit,’” McCain recalled. “I went to my office after the show, threw up in a garbage can, called my brother hysterically crying and decided to quit the show that day.”
McCain added that “the only way to survive on that show is to be vanilla pudding. Say nothing controversial with the elites, bow down, and don’t actually do the job you were hired to do, which is voice your authentic opinions.”
Elsewhere in the column, McCain said, “may the bridges I burn light the way.”