Meghan McCain Announces She’s Leaving ‘The View’: “This Was Not An Easy Decision”

Meghan McCain has confirmed she is leaving The View after four seasons. The conservative co-host made her announcement on today’s show, breaking the news to the audience and her co-hosts following a report from The Daily Mail earlier this morning.

McCain revealed that she was resigning at the start of the show, telling Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, and Sunny Hostin she would be leaving at the end of the month. “I am just going to rip the bandaid off,” McCain began.  “I am here to tell all of you, my wonderful co-hosts, and the viewers at home that this is going to be my last season here at The View. I will be here through the end of July to finish up the season with all of you, which I am grateful for.”

The co-host admitted “This was not an easy decision,” explaining, “It took a lot of thought and counsel and prayer and talking to my family and my close friends. And you know, look: Covid has changed the world for all of us and it changed the way at least, for me, the way I am looking at life, the way I am living my life, the way I want my life to look like.”

McCain said she made her decision to leave The View largely in part because she moved to the Washington, D.C. area during the pandemic. “I came to the DC area, which is where my husband and I have always split time, and it’s where I grew up splitting time, and we have this incredible life here,” she explained. “We’re surrounded by my family, his family, by friends, by this incredible support unit.”

Looking back at her experience on the show, McCain said co-hosting The View has been “one of the hands-down, greatest, most exhilarating, wonderful privileges of my entire life,” adding, “It is a privilege to work alongside such strong, brilliant, intelligent, incredible broadcasters like the four of you. You are the most talented women on all of television, hands-down, and it has been so incredible to be able to do this with you.”

After McCain broke the news on this morning’s show, ABC News issued the following statement: “For the past four years, Meghan McCain has brought her fierce determination and vast political knowledge and experience to The View. She recently came to us with her decision to depart the show at the end of this season, a difficult choice that she made for her and her family that we respect and understand.”

They added, “We wish the best for Meghan as she plans her next chapter, and thank her for the passion and unique voice that she shared with us and our viewers each day.”

Her exit comes after she joined the ABC talk show in 2017, and The Daily Mail reports that she still has two years left in her contract. A source from Disney, which owns ABC, told the outlet that despite attempts from the company to convince her to stay on, McCain chose to move forward with leaving The View. “‘We have tried to keep her, but she is adamant that now is the right time for her to leave,” the source said.

Shortly after The Daily Mail story was published, Page Six similarly reported that ABC fought to keep McCain on the show. “ABC begged for her to stay [and] she said ‘No — I’m done! I’m not staying anymore,'” a Disney source told the outlet. They added, “They even offered a contributor role on ABC News, which she tuned down. She’s just had enough. She doesn’t need it anymore — she really doesn’t need it.”

McCain’s exit follows a string of on-air fights with her co-stars, most frequently Goldberg and Behar. Last month, Goldberg was forced to send the show to a commercial break to end a spat with McCain, a tactic she used multiple times in the past season after heated exchanges between the two.

While there was palpable tension between McCain and her co-hosts, she insisted earlier this year that she had no plans to leave the show. In January, she told Andy Cohen that the co-hosts of The View are “a family” and she missed them all while she was away on maternity leave following the birth of her daughter, Liberty.

“All these women were at my dad’s funeral. We’ve been through a lot of shit together,” she told Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. “I hope that we can all be examples, myself included, for where the country should go forward. Whether we like it or not, I’m not going anywhere on the show; Joy’s not going anywhere on the show. We all have to live and co-exist together, just like Americans right now.”

The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.

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