Meghan McCain, 36, accused Vogue and its editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, 71, of being racist and problematic, during a June 30 discussion on The View about First Lady Jill Biden‘s August 2021 cover for the fashion magazine. She said that she’s been “done with Vogue” since a 2008 cover featuring NBA player LeBron James and model Gisele Bündchen, which Meghan said was “very racist” and made LeBron out to “look like an ape holding a woman.” She continued to say the magazine has a “very problematic history” and hoped that it would be held accountable.
Meghan made the accusations against Vogue as her View co-hosts were discussing why the magazine had never had former First Lady Melania Trump on its cover during her husband’s presidency. When Whoopi Goldberg asked Meghan for her thoughts on Jill’s cover and Melania’s lack of one, Meghan explained that she doesn’t support the magazine due to its alleged problematic history. She pointed to accusations of racism against the magazine that fashion journalist André Leon Talley made in his memoir.
Meghan continued her laundry list of problems, and she also accused Anna “of not putting models on her covers, of not putting people of color, [and] of having a very problematic image for women to look to.” She also said that Vogue and its editor-in-chief are “one of the reasons why we have a lot of toxicity in the fashion industry.” At the end of the segment, Meghan got one last jab in at Vogue, saying she hopes that it “starts to reconcile their deep, intense, racist legacy.”
After she tore into Vogue’s troubling history, Meghan circled back to address Melania’s lack of Vogue cover. The View co-host noted how neither Laura Bush nor Nancy Reagan appeared on the magazine’s cover, implying that many conservative first ladies are snubbed by the magazine. She said that even though she wasn’t a fan of Melania, “no one can negate the fact that she was a fashionable first lady.”
Even though Meghan said she likes Jill and thinks that she’s “beautiful and lovely and doing a great job,” she wasn’t crazy about the way she was dressed for the Vogue cover. She said she would’ve preferred to see Jill “fashioned up” and wearing an “elegant gown.” She used former First Lady Hillary Clinton‘s 1998 cover as an example for how she thinks the first lady should have been dressed.