Meghan McCain

Career 2008 presidential election

McCain launched a blog entitled McCain Blogette in 2007, documenting her father's presidential campaign as well as musing about fashion, music, and pop culture. On June 12, 2008, McCain wrote on her blog that she had changed her party registration to Republican. In 2008, she published a book entitled My Dad, John McCain.

Although her blogging was devoted to gaining support for her father among the Millennial electorate, by October 2008, Steve Schmidt and other McCain campaign staffers substantially limited her appearances on the campaign trail because they deemed her "too controversial". While McCain has denied the allegations, she herself writes in her book, that she was "fired" from the campaign, because she was perceived by those in charge to be "a curse, a brat, a diva, a monstrous daughter-of".

McCain's campaign memoir, Dirty Sexy Politics, was published in September 2010. In it, she expresses opinions about Sarah Palin and describes her relationship with McCain campaign staff. She states that the Republican Party seemed "to have lost its way in the last ten years" and added that the conservative movement seemed "hell-bent on restricting our freedoms rather than expanding them". The New York Times described McCain's book as a coming-of-age narrative about herself. Other reviews were more scathing. Leon H. Wolf wrote, "It is impossible to read Dirty, Sexy Politics and come away with the impression that you have read anything other than the completely unedited ramblings of an idiot". During the promotional tour for the book, McCain canceled an appearance at Juniata College owing to what she called "unforeseen professional circumstances". According to her Twitter feed, she was actually in Las Vegas on a girls' weekend after having been dumped by a boyfriend via e-mail. Politico stated that while John McCain did not emerge victorious from the 2008 election, "his Bud Light–drinking, talk-show–appearing, insouciantly Twittering 24-year-old daughter" did.

Media career

McCain began writing for The Daily Beast in January 2009. In March 2009, McCain wrote an article for The Daily Beast entitled "My Beef With Ann Coulter." In this article, McCain questioned why Republicans support Coulter, calling her "offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing". While Coulter did not respond, conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham challenged McCain's article by comparing her to a "valley girl." Ingraham also mocked McCain: "Ok, I was really hoping that I was going to get that role in The Real World, but then I realized that, well, they don't like plus-sized models." McCain responded to Ingraham in another article for The Daily Beast entitled "Quit Talking About My Weight, Laura Ingraham": "Instead of intellectually debating our ideological differences about the future of the Republican Party, Ingraham resorted to making fun of my age and weight, in the fashion of the mean girls in high school".

In September 2009 and February 2010, McCain had repeat stints as guest co-host of The View.

In September 2010, she appeared on the NPR news quiz show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and won a prize for a listener.

In May 2011, McCain joined celebrities like Brandy Norwood, Tatyana Ali and Danielle Fishel in appearing naked in a public service announcement for skin cancer awareness.

In November 2011, McCain became an analyst on MSNBC. McCain clashed with 2012 Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich saying that he was an "older candidate" with "old ideas".

A month-long road trip with comedian Michael Ian Black in the summer of 2011 led to a collaboration on the 2012 book America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom. In it, McCain lambasts Republican strategist Karl Rove for what she believes was his role in the attacks against her younger sister in her father's 2000 presidential campaign, castigates Bill Clinton for his actions in the Lewinsky scandal, but despite ideological differences, praises Hillary Clinton for having "pushed through many doors and shattered many glass ceilings for women in politics. I love women who don't put up with shit, and Hillary clearly doesn't." and spoke to the magazine about a wide range of subjects, including her sex life.

In September 2013, her road-based talk show Raising McCain began on the start-up Pivot cable and satellite television channel. It was canceled in January 2014. She was later added as a co-host to the show TakePart Live on the same channel, appearing with Jacob Soboroff beginning in May 2014. The show was canceled in December 2014.

She signed on as a Fox News contributor in July 2015 and was named a regular co-host of the afternoon talk program Outnumbered on November 14, 2016. McCain left FOX News in September 2017.

Following her departure from both the program and the network in September 2017, McCain was named a permanent co-host of the ABC daytime talk show The View. She made her debut on the October 9, 2017, episode. She had previously guest co-hosted the show in 2008 and 2010. She announced her exit from the show after her fourth season in July 2021.

In September 2021, McCain became an opinion columnist for the tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail. As of July 2026, she still writes columns for the Daily Mail.

In April 2022, McCain published a memoir entitled Bad Republican. The memoir sold 244 copies in its opening week.

McCain launched her podcast, Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat, in late 2023. She later renamed her podcast "Citizen McCain". It is a semiweekly podcast on the 2WAY Network hosted by Meghan McCain with her co-host Miranda Wilkins. The program combines political commentary with discussions of popular culture, current events, and American cultural themes. McCain has expanded the show by merging its YouTube format with a podcast, broadening the show's scope and audience. The platform features interviews with public figures, including Usha Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Winsome Earle-Sears, Mike Huckabee, Elise Stefanik, Lara Trump, and Freddie Smith.

Political positions

McCain describes herself as "a woman who despises labels and boxes and stereotypes" and politically identifies as a Republican who is "liberal on social issues." McCain has also said, "All I am trying to be is a young, cool Republican woman for other Republican women." Statements such as these led news reports and commentators including Rachel Maddow and Kathleen Parker to conclude that McCain had the same "maverick gene" as her father. After U.S. Senator Arlen Specter left the Republican Party for the Democratic Party in April 2009, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh asserted that many Republicans wished both McCain and her father would leave the Republican Party as well. In response, McCain tweeted, "RED TIL I'M DEAD BABY!!! I love the republican party enough to give it constructive criticism, I love my party and sure as hell not leavin!". In this way, she spoke at the Log Cabin Republicans convention in April 2009, In June 2009, McCain posed for the NOH8 Campaign, a celebrity photo project that protests California's Proposition 8 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which her mother Cindy also posed for. She also co-hosted GLAAD's Concert for Love and Acceptance in Nashville in 2015. McCain described the Trump administration's ban on transgender service as "an unfair, un-American, and dangerous policy."

She has stated she is anti-abortion She has also, however, expressed an opinion that conservatives demonstrate hypocrisy regarding abortion: "They go on and on about how evil and wrong abortion is, but don't like to talk about how easy it is to not get pregnant." On a May 2009 episode of the Colbert Report, McCain stated her support for sex education and criticized Bristol Palin's sexual abstinence campaign, saying it was "not realistic for this generation". McCain also argued that the Republican Party "can be a party for a 24-year-old pro-sex woman. It can be."

At first, McCain had doubts about the 2003 invasion of Iraq but subsequently supported her father's pro-intervention position regarding it.

In terms of economic policy, she once remarked on The Rachel Maddow Show: "I didn't even take econ[omics] in college. I don't completely understand it so I'd hate to make a comment one way or the other. That's—truly of all the things—I keep reading and I just don't understand it."

In the 2016 presidential election, she did not vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, instead writing in Evan McMullin.

McCain weeps next to her father's casket laying in state at the Arizona State Capitol, Aug. 29, 2018. On September 1, 2018, she delivered a eulogy at her father's funeral at Washington National Cathedral; McCain mourned her father's passing as the "passing of American greatness, the real thing." In what was widely seen as a sharp rebuke of Donald Trump, McCain remarked: "The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great." McCain has publicly discussed her struggles with grief following the death of her father in 2018. In December 2019, McCain spoke at the annual End Well Symposium about challenging taboos and destigmatizing conversations about grief and death. McCain has since voiced regrets on her and her family's handling of her father's glioblastoma diagnosis saying, "I also have a lot of regrets almost a decade since my dad’s passing. My family should have forced him to step down the second he was diagnosed."

In 2019, she became a vocal critic of Ilhan Omar, the Democratic representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district, over comments Omar made which some conservatives considered antisemitic. McCain criticized and repeated these comments after Omar apologized for them, and tried to link them to acts of antisemitic violence such as the Poway synagogue shooting, which was criticized by many as a false equivalence and a form of whataboutism deflecting from the white supremacist ideology of the shooter. Host Seth Meyers on Late Night with Seth Meyers also accused McCain of conflating Omar's criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and for diminishing death threats against Omar as a result of her previous comments.

In the 2020 presidential election, she voted for Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump

McCain spoke out against the 2021 United States Capitol attack, saying on The View: "I'm not against sending these people to Gitmo. ... These are domestic terrorists who attacked our own republic. They should be treated the same way we treat Al-Qaeda." She also said, "The bedrock of our democracy and the bedrock of who we are as Americans is the peaceful transition of power. And he is clearly a president who has turned into a mad king." She then called for the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution to be invoked and Trump to be removed from office.

In the 2024 presidential election, she did not vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, instead writing in her deceased father John McCain. However, after Trump won and returned to the White House for his second term, McCain attended the swearing in of her "personal friend" Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence where she said Trump was "very kind and very nice". McCain added that "the second President Trump term: I much prefer it, I really like the tone."

Personal life In July 2017, McCain became engaged to conservative writer and commentator Ben Domenech. They were married on November 21, 2017, at McCain's family ranch in Page Springs, Arizona. In July 2019, McCain revealed that she had miscarried earlier that year. She gave birth to the couple's first daughter in September 2020, who is the goddaughter of Tulsi Gabbard and her husband Abraham. She gave birth to a second daughter in January 2023, and a son in 2026.

Awards and nominations

Writings