Meghan McCain opens up about being a conservative woman in mainstream media in exclusive 'Hannity' interview

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Meghan McCain joins Hannity for first TV interview since leaving 'The View'

Author of 'Bad Republican' joins 'Hannity' to discuss being 'targeted' as the 'token conservative' and her tumultuous exit from 'The View'

Meghan McCain joined "Hannity" for an exclusive interview Tuesday in which she discussed her departure from "The View." 

"I'm just traumatized looking at it. Man, that's brutal," host Sean Hannity said after viewing clips of exchanges between McCain and "View" hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg. 

McCain said the way she was treated caused her to rethink her job. "My four years in an anthropological experiment at left-wing media had come to an end," she said.

As the "token conservative" on the show, McCain alleged she was "targeted" and "treated differently" by fellow hosts for being pro-life and "for not voting for President Obama."

"I don't think that people who go into liberal spaces, which is basically every other space except Fox News … I don't think you should be punished for it … [but] that's unfortunately exactly what happened to me," she said,

"This is like a cancerous environment," Hannity said. 

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"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," McCain said. 

As the show became more successful during McCain's tenure, including an Emmy win, the hostility became stronger and then seeped into on-air exchanges, she said.

"I actually felt like the more successful I was on ‘The View’ … and the more I pressed liberal candidates and liberal guests on the show, the worse it got for me backstage. And then ultimately, it started spilling out on air," McCain said. 

McCain noted that she would "not have survived emotionally ... if it weren't for the women that I met at Fox News" while she co-hosted "Outnumbered." 

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"I had a sisterhood at Fox that I lost [on] ‘The View,’ and I know what women supporting women looks like because I had it when I worked at Fox News. And now I know what the entire opposite experience is." 

McCain announced in July that she was leaving "The View" and discusses the details of her departure in her new book, "Bad Republican."