Katie Couric & Meghan McCain: A Timeline Of Their Feud
Meghan McCain called Katie Couric a ‘hypocritical’ journalist in a shocking column she wrote on Oct. 15. Find out how the entire feud unfolded and get details on their rocky history here.
Meghan McCain, 37, didn’t hold back about her feelings on Katie Couric, 64, in a column for Daily Mail, which was published on Oct. 15, and it’s bringing their headline-making feud to the forefront of everyone’s minds. The former co-host of The View fearlessly called the broadcast legend “a hypocrite” and criticized her journalism when Katie admitted to leaving out certain comments from the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg after a 2016 interview she had with her. Although she claimed she took out some of her words as a way to “protect” her, Meghan wasn’t having it and even seemingly called Katie’s behavior “toxic.”
Find out the details of the feud, how it unfolded, and past issues they’ve had below.
Before Their Latest Feud, Meghan Called Out Katie In Jan. 2021.
The Republican called Katie’s comments “out of bounds” after she spoke to Bill Maher over how she feels people should view former President Donald Trump‘s supporters. “I also think some of them are believing the garbage that they are being fed 24/7 on the internet, by their constituents, and they bought into this big lie,” Katie said. “And the question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump.”
Meghan, who has been known to also criticize Trump, responded to Katie’s words by saying she thought that after Joe Biden‘s presidential win in Nov. 2020, Democrats would be calling for unity. “Instead we’re hearing a lot of language from people like Katie Couric talking about Republicans like me need to be deprogramed, that we’re brainwashed — that 74 million Americans are basically irredeemable people, that we don’t need to communicate with or in any way have anything to do with,” she said shortly after Katie’s interview. “I think it’s horribly dangerous for the country and I also think it’s horribly dangerous for Democrats. … Honestly, they can go to hell because I don’t need to be deprogrammed.”
Their Latest Feud All Started With Katie’s Memoir.
Katie’s new book, Going There, which has a release date of Oct. 26, 2021, reveals intimate details about her life and the struggles she went through, such as a battle with bulimia as a teen, but it also includes her opinions and actions as a journalist, which is what Meghan had a problem with. She admitted to leaving a portion of her interview with Ruth out because she criticized NFL players like Colin Kaepernick for kneeling in protest during the national anthem during football games.
Katie explained that the former Supreme Court Justice described the players kneeling as having “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.” She went on to claim that a public affairs official for the Supreme Court asked her to remove the comments about the NFL players the next day because they said she had “misspoken.”
Katie Admitted Removing Ruth’s Comments Wasn’t An Easy Decision.
In the book, Katie also says she “lost a lot of sleep” while thinking about how to proceed with the request to remove the comments. She was also receiving conflicting opinions about whether or not to go along with it, but she ultimately decided to make the cut.
After Advanced Copies Of Katie’s Book Were Sent Out, Meghan Wrote The Column That Called Her Out.
Meghan quit The View and teamed up with the Daily Mail to work as a columnist in Sept. 2021. She released a statement that said she was excited about the job because it would allow her to share her opinions without the fear of censorship and in her column about Katie, that’s exactly what she did. It was released on Oct. 15, 2021 and talked about Katie’s practices as a journalist as well as toxicity in the workplace.
“How can there be any expectation of trust between anyone with an opinion to the right of Ruth Bader Ginsburg if interviewers and their networks believe editing out commentary they believe would hurt a progressive icon is an ethical thing to do?” Meghan questioned in the column, before adding, “…Katie Couric would have afforded no conservative woman any such mercy.”
She went on to say that “the generations before mine have created, fostered and enabled a long line of toxic behavior towards the generations of women coming up behind them,” before calling Katie’s memoir, “nothing short of a kamikaze mission to destroy what is left of the carcass of her career.”
Meghan also said she “hated” Katie’s book during her Oct. 20, 2021 appearance on Watch What Happens Live, which can be seen above.
Meghan Admitted She Hasn’t Liked Katie Since Her 2008 Interview With Sarah Palin.
Katie’s infamous interview with former Alaska Governor and then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008, received a lot of criticism, and Meghan admitted it was that moment that caused her not to like the former Today anchor. “I don’t like Katie Couric, I haven’t liked Katie Couric since she interviewed Sarah Palin,” Meghan wrote before describing the interview as “a trainwreck” in which Sarah performed poorly.
“But she was being interviewed by an infamous mean girl who has now admitted to leaving out a ‘damaging’ part of an interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg where the former Supreme Court justice and left-wing icon admits to not liking those who kneel before rather than salute our American flag,” she continued.
Meghan brought up both interviews, with Sarah and Ruth, to point out that she didn’t trust Katie for not tweaking her final interviews to make liberals look good and conservatives look bad. “If we now know for a fact that if Katie Couric edited her interviews to make famous liberals look good, one can only imagine and speculate about what she might possibly have done to make conservatives look bad,” she explained before using that as an example of why people shouldn’t trust media. “How many other interviews did she rig or manipulate during her long, storied career? And why did her network allow it to air in such a fashion?”
Katie Hasn’t Responded To Meghan.
As of Oct. 24, 2021, Katie hadn’t responded to Meghan’s comments about her memoir, but since she’s often in the spotlight and dishing details during her book tour and other appearances, we’d suspect the topic could come up sometime in the future.