‘The View’ Should Replace Meghan McCain with Bari Weiss

Change is coming to The View. In March, just a few weeks after the ABC talk show went virtual in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, conservative co-host Meghan McCain announced that she was pregnant with her first child. McCain has revealed few additional details about her pregnancy, but with the 2020 presidential election on the horizon, The View will undoubtedly need to replace their ratings-making star when she goes on maternity leave in the fall. It brings me no joy to say this, but there is only one person who seems right for the job: former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss.

Let me preface this by saying that I disagree with Bari Weiss on practically everything, from her stance on Israel to her “cancel culture” screeds and beyond. However, I also have the distinct pleasure (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) of watching The View every day, and it’s clear that Weiss, with her provocative takes and fervent critics, has the stuff to fill McCain’s seat, even just for a few weeks. If McCain is a firecracker, Weiss is the match that makes it go boom.

This isn’t just a random pick for a conservative button pusher who has recently made headlines, either. Weiss is no stranger to The View. The former New York Times op-ed staff editor and writer has guest hosted on various occasions, most recently in February 2020, and has stopped by as a guest countless other times (she appeared on the show just a few days before McCain famously cried during a conversation about anti-Semitism). During these appearances, Weiss proved that she has the TV bonafides to deftly switch between political, pop culture, and lifestyle topics, a skill required of all daytime hosts.

On top of her familiarity with the ABC talk show, Weiss and McCain are friends off-camera, so her casting wouldn’t lead to a power struggle between the two women when McCain returns from parental leave. The conservative co-host seemed to enjoy having backup during Weiss’ previous appearances on The View; and on July 14, just hours after Weiss announced her resignation from the NYT, she publicly voiced her support for her fellow contrarian.

“Right before we came on air, it came out that my friend Bari Weiss is leaving the New York Times,” said McCain during yet another “cancel culture” discussion. “Part of it is the controversy over that Tom Cotton op-ed, which exploded … [Weiss] was entangled in it for a lot of different reasons. She’s been a target of many people on the left, in many different ways, despite the fact that she is a liberal Democrat.”

Logistics aside, let’s put all the cards on the table: it’s Weiss’ politics and persona that make her most attractive to ABC execs looking to temporarily replace McCain. While McCain may consider her friend a “liberal Democrat,” Weiss would likely disagree with that label. In an interview with Joe Rogan, the How to Fight Anti-Semitism author described herself as a “left-leaning centrist” driven by her support for Israel and Zionism. Like McCain, Weiss has made her concerns about Trump, the #MeToo movement, and the alleged stifling of free speech on college campuses clear; and like McCain, Weiss believes that mainstream media has “become a kind of performance space” that pushes out voices engaged in “Wrongthink,” as she claimed in her NYT resignation letter.

“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” she wrote in the letter. “I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do — the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: ‘to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.'”

McCain offered a similar analysis the day Weiss resigned. “When you are a conservative, or someone who is center-right, or someone who is saying something that is different, it is just hostile territory in mainstream media,” she told her co-hosts. “I, for one, I don’t want to just be able to watch Fox News! I want to read opinion columns in The New York Times from a diversity of people … And I worry we are going down a slippery slope where we will not have the kind of diversity of opinion that I think all of us celebrate want on this show.”

In addition to their ideological similarities, Weiss and McCain are among media’s most-criticized figures, if not the most-criticized. The internet is filled with savage takedowns of both women, many of which are deserved, others less so. If The View were to cast Weiss, it would no doubt stir up controversy, and like it or not, controversy equals ratings. With McCain on the sidelines for an unknown amount of time, perhaps even through the November election, ABC will need to go to great lengths to preserve its place among the top three network and syndicated and daytime talk shows, a position it claimed in the final weeks of the just finished Season 23.

Of course, the timing of all this remains up in the air. McCain and husband Ben Domenech, co-founder of right-wing outlet The Federalist, first announced her pregnancy in late March, but the couple declined to reveal her due date. However, McCain’s tweets may provide some insight: on July 15, she replied to a tweet about Kevin Hart’s pregnant wife and wrote that “3rd trimester is gnarly.” If The View co-host’s third trimester began in July (or maybe even earlier), it stands to reason that she is due sometime between now and October. Depending on when she gives birth, McCain’s maternity leave could take her through the election, or even into 2021.

All this is to say that finding a suitable substitute for McCain is a major undertaking. Regardless of how you feel about her politics, the outspoken conservative is the big kahuna of The View, and she deserves to be replaced with an equally large personality. Now that she has some free time on her hands, Bari Weiss seems like a no-brainer for the spot.

Or, you know, The View could replace Meghan McCain with frequent guest co-host Ana Navarro. Lord knows McCain would hate that.

Full Disclosure: The author of this piece is friends with Bari Weiss’ sister, Suzy Weiss, who works for the New York Post. Decider is part of the New York Post Digital Network.

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