MaestroMeghan McCain slams
Published on March 04, 2026 EDT "I saw Annette Bening laughing and clapping," the former "View" cohost said. "I'm like, keep clapping, everybody, keep doing it, you're getting him re-elected."

After three months of stewing, former View cohost Meghan McCain's intense, burning disdain for Bradley Cooper's Maestro and Hollywood elites has reached a new peak following the 2024 Oscars.

"I watched two-thirds of it last night, then got bored and I went to sleep," McCain said on Tuesday's episode of her Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat podcast, where she referenced Cooper's Leonard Bernstein biographical drama publicly for the third time, since initially berating the project on the show back in December.

"Basically, you just need to know Oppenheimer won everything and Maestro won nothing because Maestro is the worst movie ever made and I'm still pissed that I sat through it. I can't even express to you how much I hated Maestro, I don't even understand how it was nominated, it was so bad."

The 39-year-old then turned her focus toward the relatively inoffensive broadcast of the 96th Academy Awards' most politically charged moment, which saw host Jimmy Kimmel mockingly read an incendiary social media post former president Donald Trump sent out during the telecast.

"I don't understand how people don't understand at this point, like, Jimmy Kimmel, you're helping Trump get elected. Every time you give him attention, you turn him into this bad guy, and then the whole room is clapping and applauding," McCain said in response to Kimmel making a joke about Trump's impending "jail time" after reading the post live on stage. "I saw Annette Bening laughing and clapping, I'm like, keep clapping, everybody, keep doing it, you're getting him re-elected. It's nothing more that's better for his base than having a room full of Hollywood people clap at him being in jail."

William B. Plowman/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images; Jason McDonald/Netflix; Disney/Frank Micelotta

The morning after Sunday's Oscars, Kimmel revealed on Live With Kelly and Mark that he was told not to read Trump's message to the audience at the Dolby Theatre, but that he persisted anyway.

“They’re like, ‘You’ve got a little bit of time’ and I was like, ‘I’m reading the Trump tweet,’ and they’re like, ‘No, no, don’t read that,'" Kimmel said with a laugh, without clarifying exactly who told him not to read the note. "[I was like] ‘Yes, I am.’"

Listen to McCain discuss the Oscars in the podcast episode above.

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