When Meghan McCain left The View last year, the “toxic work environment” and contentious interactions with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar were among the reasons McCain offered to Variety at the time. Following up in her audiobook Bad Republican: A Memoir, McCain went into detail about interactions both on and off-screen with co-hosts and executives, and publicly looked forward to her new role as a Daily Mail contributor. As McCain’s memoir hits shelves as a hardcover book, the daughter of former Republican Presidential candidate John McCain has found herself immersed in a public feud with an entirely different kind of opponent.
In an absolutely scorching Twitter thread, Steve Schmidt, Senator John McCain’s 2008 senior campaign strategist and adviser, responded to reports that McCain’s book has sold less than 300 copies since it released in hardcover in late April. The Lincoln Project co-founder kicked off his rant my stating that after “14 years of abuse and attacks, today is the day I have decided to respond” (McCain “liked” a post on Twitter by an extreme far-right person that Schmidt considered “slander” based on its content). Schmidt launched into a thread detailing McCain’s behavior on the campaign trail for the 2008 campaign, including an incident where he left her standing on the tarmac when she “didn’t make the plane” He went on to say that “I was the first adult that Meghan McCain ever encountered that she heard the word NO from,” going on to say “I told her she was unimportant and that the Presidential election wasn’t about her.” Near the end of his rant, Schmidt said “She has rejected her Family’s history of service for a shallow and purposeless celebrity where she trades on a famous name like a fourth generation wannabe clipping coupons while pretending to be an heir”.
.@MeghanMcCain has been trying to have a conversation with me for almost 14 years. Once again, today, she called me a Pedophile. It is a slander. It is disgusting. It is untrue and it says everything about her. Here she is liking the tweet of a far right liar and piece of filth
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) May 7, 2022
Despite her on-air scuffles with liberal (former) colleagues on The View and her outspoken views on the Biden Administration currently, McCain still considers herself a loyal and undying advocate of the LGBTQ community (her own Instagram is sprinkled with shots of her and best friend Josh Rupley and McCain herself encouraged Republicans to support marriage equality in 2015). During a visit to Watch What Happens Live last year (McCain is a Bravo super-fan) McCain reiterated to Andy Cohen, saying simply “I love everyone, I respect everyone, I want everyone to be treated equally under the law & the Constitution”.
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