On her final Monday as host of The View, Meghan McCain was conspicuously absent from the show’s big interview with Mary Trump.
McCain spent the first part of Monday’s episode brazenly attacking comedian Kathy Griffin, who had just announced a lung cancer diagnosis and was likely undergoing surgery at that moment, for jokingly speculating about her friend Clay Aiken’s sexuality before he came out as gay more than a decade ago.
“I don’t like her. I’m never going to like her,” McCain said, demanding an apology from the comedian before comparing her to ISIS for posting the infamous photo in which she held up a Trump mask covered in fake blood.
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But the show’s sole conservative was nowhere to be seen when the former president’s niece Mary Trump—promoting her newest book, The Reckoning—joined the show around halfway through the broadcast. Her noticeable absence went unremarked upon until the very end of the interview when Mary Trump called McCain out directly for not having the “courage” to debate her on live TV.
After hammering Donald Trump and his Republican allies for perpetrating a second “big lie” about the Jan. 6 insurrection and highlighting just how much blame her uncle deserves for “the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans” due to his mishandling of the coronavirus, Mary Trump zoomed out.
“One thing Donald proved is that using racism as a platform was successful, and I think that’s why we see so much strife in this country,” she said. “And we need to continue having the kinds of conversations about race and gender that you have.”
“It's a shame that your colleague didn't have the courage to come on and have this conversation with me,” Mary Trump continued, making it abundantly obvious who she was talking about. “But I appreciate that you were all willing to take up these very difficult subjects because racism, in my view, is at the heart of everything that's wrong in 21st century America.”
What followed was an interminably awkward pause from the rest of the co-hosts before Whoopi Goldberg wrapped up the segment by plugging their guest’s new book.
The last time Mary Trump came face-to-face with McCain on The View just over a year ago, she pointedly shut down the conservative pundit for accusing her of “cashing in” on her family name. “Well, you’re entirely entitled to your opinion,” she said with a smile at the time.
A few hours after the broadcast ended, McCain posted her not-so-subtle retort on Twitter. And like Mary Trump, she declined to name names: “There is no ‘good’ Trump family member to me. Continue to wish they would all just leave me and my entire family the fuck alone.”
