Meghan McCain appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” Tuesday and told host Sean Hannity that former vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin was besmirched by her father’s campaign aides.

In the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain selected Palin, then the governor of Alaska, to be his running mate. While she was well-liked among Republicans, she endured criticism from the left for her perceived lack of experience and inability to lead as president if necessary.

In fact, the recently-departed Colin Powell once justified his endorsement of Barack Obama by saying “I don’t believe [Palin] is ready to be president of the United States.” By contrast, he said Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, “is ready to be president on day one.”

If only we could turn back time.

(Video: Fox News)

But, Meghan McCain contends that Sarah Palin was “set up for failure,” by some rather not-friendly fire. She singled out MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, who at the time was a senior adviser for her father’s campaign. McCain says Wallace arranged the gotcha-style interview with Katie Couric that resulted in diminished appeal for the Alaska governor.

“I have a whole new lens of viewing how Sarah Palin was treated and how the people working for my father’s campaign really, you know, in my opinion, treated her really horribly, set her up for failure,” said McCain. “I think when you’re seeing Katie Couric talk about how Ruth Bader Ginsburg is someone she helped look good, I thought, well obviously… and I thought that obviously she probably put Sarah Palin in a position to look bad. And by the way, Nicolle Wallace was the person who facilitated that interview, who now has a show on MSNBC.”

McCain added, “I just really hope that the culture has some redemption for Sarah Palin in the same way that we have for so many other women right now.”

McCain recently wrote a tell-all memoir for release as an audiobook. No print version is available as of yet. In it, she details her contentious departure from “The View” in July of 2021. She discussed her experiences with Hannity as part of her exclusive interview Tuesday, and the host was quick to confirm that he, too, had experienced the same cacophony and venom that the show’s rabidly anti-conservative panel is known for.

As the “token conservative” on the show, McCain alleged she was “targeted” and “treated differently” by fellow hosts for being pro-life and “for not voting for President Obama.”

“I don’t think that people who go into liberal spaces, which is basically every other space except Fox News … I don’t think you should be punished for it … [but] that’s unfortunately exactly what happened to me,” she said,

“This is like a cancerous environment,” Hannity said.

“Being a conservative woman in mainstream media is deeply threatening. Being a woman who can hold her own on a show like that proved to be ultimately threatening, so it became more and more personal,” McCain said.

“I actually felt like the more successful I was on ‘The View’ … and the more I pressed liberal candidates and liberal guests on the show, the worse it got for me backstage. And then ultimately, it started spilling out on air,” she said.

McCain noted that she would “not have survived emotionally … if it weren’t for the women that I met at Fox News” while she co-hosted “Outnumbered.”

“I had a sisterhood at Fox that I lost [on] ‘The View,’ and I know what women supporting women looks like because I had it when I worked at Fox News. And now I know what the entire opposite experience is.”

McCain’s memoir, “Bad Republican” is scheduled for release on Audible on Oct. 21st.

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Frank Webster

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Frank (Chip) Webster is a musician and composer, former teacher of percussion and U.S. Army Infantry veteran. He holds a degree in English from Arizona State University.

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