McCain was repeatedly confronted about her political viewpoints by her co-hosts in Friday's episode, and she explained that those views had made her a target once she left Arizona.
"I think it's important, when I leave my apartment in New York City, from the second I leave, I'm inundated culturally, in the news, socially when people yell things at me that aren't nice on the street, I'm reminded I'm a conservative," McCain said. "It's not the same experience for a liberal living in New York City. For me I take, as you said, where I come from, which is a deep red state, very seriously to show that perspective on a show where I'm one voice of many."
Joy Behar said she believed they agreed on a number of topics, and McCain recoiled.
"We don't agree on anything," she said.
Co-host Sunny Hostin asked her to define the conservative values that made up her core identity.
"Well, no disrespect, I'm not here to teach a professorial class," McCain said, looking toward the audience.
Host Whoopi Goldberg refused to let her off the hook that easy, and said it would be helpful to viewers if she explained what she believed.
"Small government, strong national defense, I'm extremely pro-life, pro-military," McCain rattled off. "I believe that America is a shining beacon on top of a hill, like Ronald Reagan said."
Then she changed the subject to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who's running a long-shot Democratic presidential campaign with an isolationist foreign policy platform, which is outside the party's mainstream position.
"It's a popular one that is gaining traction," McCain insisted.
Goldberg and the others seemed baffled, and co-host Ana Navarro complained that McCain was spreading misleading Republican propaganda.
"It actually is not popular," Navarro said. "That's the point I was making first, when there are people trying to define the Democratic Party by these voices."
Navarro listed a number of Democratic Party leaders whose views differ from Gabbard's, and McCain tried to turn the tables.
"I actually want to know why you're a conservative," McCain said.
