While a guest on Thursday's edition of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on CBS, Meghan McCain described her departure from the Fox News Channel to be the conservative co-host on The View weekday program as “weird.”
“This show has been on for 21 years, and I’m the 21st host,” McCain told Colbert. “I’ve been on so many shows where people never watched and couldn’t figure out what channel it was on. And like, everyone knows what The View is, and being the one conservative” on the ABC weekday program has “this sort of weird, like, allure to it.”
She also discussed the reaction she's gotten since joining the other women on the discussion program last fall as “intense.”
McCain stated that some people tell her “I love you,” while others grouse: “I hate you, and you’re ruining my show.”
“It’s an interesting seat to take over,” the co-host said.
In response, Colbert asked her if she feels like a “lamb chop in a wolf den” with the other, much more liberal co-hosts, but McCain replied that she's “really tough” and “not a snowflake.”
The liberal host then pressed the issue by asking her if she's more comfortable around “non-conservatives” since she's the daughter of Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona.
Well, I worked at Fox [News Channel] for years, and when you’re in the ‘Fox echo chamber’ and you’re surrounded by conservatives, you rein this in like a very warm bubble, and you’re like: “Oh, everyone feels this way.”
And it’s not that I didn’t know liberals, but I didn’t know people were like quite as liberal as [fellow View co-host] Joy Behar.
McCain added: “And every morning, it’s like: 'Why are all Republicans racist Nazis?’ And I’m like: ‘Look, I haven’t had my latte yet. and maybe we can talk about something else.'”
Of course, she toned back her comments by indicating that Behar is a “lovely" person and that she “really likes” her co-host.
“It’s a really interesting experience, especially in the Trump era,” McCain noted.
It came as no surprise that Colbert asked his guest to comment on her father's health since the GOP official was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer last year.
He was hospitalized in December for “treatment of side effects from the cancer therapy,” she noted and stated that he has been “away from the Capitol as he recuperates at home in Sedona, Arizona.”
“He had a sort of rough time at Christmas, and he’s made this crazy, amazing recovery which I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at,” she said. “He is so resilient in so many different ways” before describing her father as “a tough bastard.”
On when her father will be back in Washington, D.C., McCain didn’t give a time frame but said she “hope he comes back to Washington very soon because I would like to see him go up against Trump a little more.”
Finally, Colbert discussed his guest's recent wedding.
McCain told him she never thought she'd find someone she wanted to “do life with” (which Colbert replied sounds more like a prison sentence than a marriage) because she was not “a marriage person,” but as part of the ceremony, she wanted everyone to “get drunk” and “eat bison” meat.
“I'm so independent,” she added after Colbert wondered why this was the case since such things as “marriage and the family unit” are “very conservative ideals.”
