Meghan McCain has faced a lot of criticism since leaving her position as a host on The View. She recently confronted that criticism during an interview on Fox News with Howard Kurtz. In the interview, she discussed the reasons she left, and she responded to the negative reaction she received when she did.

She explains how her time on the ABC show started to deteriorate when she was experiencing postpartum anxiety. She said to Kurtz:

“I would confide in you and a lot of friends at Fox that it was really rough. 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.”

She also mentioned that she was feeling anxious about everything in her life being broadcast on national television. She explained that she was worried for the safety of her child when she had become such an unpopular figurehead for many groups of people. Her fears are not uncommon, and are shared by mothers everywhere, no matter what political party they belong to.

McCain’s discussion of her personal postpartum anxiety is commendable, as it is a taboo topic that not many women would be brave enough to speak about, especially on Fox News. Her honest and raw answers could be taken as “whining”, but as she says in the interview, she does not see herself as a victim.

McCain opened up about her specific fears, such as her paranoia that her daughter would be subject to misplaced anger at Meghan herself, and that she may even be harmed or kidnapped. She acknowledged that she is a controversial figure, and as someone who was put on the spot, she answered as truthfully and as courageously as possible.