Fox News host Howard Kurtz asked former View host Meghan Meghan to respond to criticism that she is painting herself as a "victim" after quitting the program.
During an interview on Fox News, Kurtz noted that McCain's former co-host, Joy Behar, had said on the air that McCain was not missed during her maternity leave.
"I felt like anytime Trump would do anything that people hate, they would just take their anger out on me," she explained. "Because I was just an avatar for conservatives and the Republican Party. And as he got more aggressive, it got more aggressive towards me."
To make matters worse, McCain said that she suffered "bad postpartum anxiety."
"I had really irrational fears about because I'm so controversial, because people have these really intense visceral reactions towards me that they were going to somehow channel their anger at hate towards my child," she recalled. "So I had fears that, like, she was going to be kidnapped. I wanted my husband to hire armed guards outside our house. Again, I was hormonal and diagnosed with -- I don't know what you call it -- a disorder."
"I would confide in you and a lot of friends at Fox that it was really rough," she told Kurtz. "I thought it was starting to impact me. I'm a serious person and I really worried that the avatar and the sort of caricature of who I was becoming was going to become reality at some point. And I was also sick of having everything that happened in my life being told through the lens leakers inside ABC."
Kurtz pushed back: "Some people out there are going to say, hey, it was a television show. You were paid lots of money to do it. It's a rough and tumble environment and are you painting yourself as a victim here?"
"Yeah, I've definitely heard that," McCain replied. "The thing I would say. I don't think anybody, no matter how much you're paid or what situation you're in should be bullied at work. And I think this is a much larger issue about toxicity at the workplace in America. I think it's a much larger issue about how women are treated when they come back from maternity leave."
"So I think it's a much larger problem," she added. "I get that I'm like the last person that anyone should feel sorry for. I don't think of myself [as] a victim. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me."
