Meghan McCain has said that she feels sorry for her father's presidential running mate Sarah Palin because the 2008 GOP VP pick was set up for failure by her own campaign team.
The DailyMail.com columnist, 36, appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show on Tuesday night to promote her new book, Bad Republican.
In her 2010 book, Dirty Sexy Politics, she described Palin as a 'time bomb' and 'somebody who leaves a wake of confusion and chaos -- to the point of dizziness -- wherever she went.'
Yet McCain said her views on Palin have shifted.
'I have a whole new lens of viewing how Sarah Palin was treated and how the people working for my father's campaign really, you know, in my opinion, treated her really horribly, set her up for failure,' McCain told Hannity.
Palin in her own 2009 memoir, Going Rogue, said that she felt that McCain's team were deliberately unhelpful to her. The former Alaska governor was lambasted in the media for her frequent gaffes and apparent gaps in her political knowledge.
Meghan McCain appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show on Tuesday evening to discuss her new book
And McCain concurred during her Hannity appearance, saying: 'It's like the old adage: if you're not liberal when you're young, you don't have a heart; if you're not conservative when you're old, you don't have a brain.
'And I really hope culture has some redemption for Sarah Palin, in the same way we have for so many other women right now.'
McCain's new book also details her painful exit from The View, which she quit in August after four years, and discusses the challenges of being a conservative woman working in liberal media.
McCain told host Sean Hannity about her feelings on Sarah Palin, and why she left the daytime chat show The View
McCain wrote in her 2010 book that she was unimpressed with Sarah Palin, her father's 2008 running mate. But in her new book, she said her opinion had evolved
McCain said that she now felt sorry for Palin, and felt she had been sabotaged by her father's campaign staff
McCain told Hannity that she took the job at The View on the recommendation of her father, who died in August 2018 aged 81.
'He loved the show,' she said.
'It's a mainstream show, and I do think it is important that we have to fight the culture war in their spaces - because quite frankly I think we are losing it - and he thought they needed a strong conservative.
'There had been a whole host of Republican and so-called Republican women - women who claim to be Republicans that are not, in my opinion - who had hosted the show and failed.
'He thought I was up for the job, and I did everything he told me to do so I did it, and I actually really enjoyed the first year and a half of the show.'
McCain said that as she grew into the role, her co-hosts and the crew began to turn on her.
'As I grew stronger and more and more people would come on the show, and I would really hold liberal guests' feet to the fire, I felt a lot of backlash, both internally and externally at the show,' she said.
'You are targeted if you're the token conservative and you are treated differently.'
McCain is pictured in October 2017 when her father, Senator John McCain, paid a visit to the set of The View
She said that her politics put her at odds with the others, and the crew.
'Being a conservative woman in mainstream media is deeply threatening; being a woman who can hold her own on a show like that proved to be ultimately threatening.
'So it became more and more personal the stronger the show got.
'That was the ironic part of it - the better the show did, after we won an Emmy, we were on the cover as the most important political show in America.
'I feel like the toxicity got worse and worse.'
She said the unpleasantness started 'backstage, and ultimately started spilling out on air.'
McCain said how, when she returned from maternity leave, on January 5, she had an on-screen argument with co-host Joy Behar that sparked her eventual departure.
'You missed me so much, Joy,' McCain said, during one segment. 'You missed me so much when I was on maternity leave. You missed fighting with me.'
Behar replied: 'I did not. I did not miss you. Zero.'
Host Whoopi Goldberg quickly moved in to shut things down, but McCain was heard saying: 'That's so nasty. I was teasing because you said something rude. That was so rude.'
McCain is seen with, from left, Joy Behar; Abby Huntsman; guest star Jamie Lee Curtis; Sunny Hostin. McCain was on the show for four years and quit in August
McCain described the final years on The View as 'toxic' and said she had to quit for her mental health
In her book, McCain said she burst into tears during a commercial break. At the end of the show, she began crying again and vomited, she wrote.
'It is one of the most singular feelings of loneliness and anguish I have felt in my entire life,' McCain wrote.
'It was a perfect storm of hormones, postpartum anxiety and a lot of demons on 'The View' coming out to bite me.'
McCain told Hannity she left the show both for her own mental health and as an example for other mothers, to demonstrate that they did not have to put up with the abuse.
'I thought it was important for mothers to hear that it is okay, you don't have to put yourself or your pregnancy in a position where you could possibly have your health or your mental health put in a position of toxicity,' she said.
'And I decided to leave after I became a mother, and that was ultimately the game changing moment for me.'
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