Whoopi Goldberg had a clear and to-the-point message for people who believe that the popular talk show The View should be taken off the air.
During the Thursday, March 13 broadcast, the hosts talked about California Governor Gavin Newsom‘s recent podcast episode featuring controversial political figure Steve Bannon.
The hosts debated if Newsom made the right decision to invite Bannon on the show and whether or not the resulting conversation had “the right tone,” before Goldberg related the debate to critics of The View.
Sara Haines first shared her thoughts, saying, “I’m all for sitting down with people. I say over and over at this table, ‘You’ve gotta have the conversations, even with the difficult people.'” But she criticized Newsom for having “no pushback” about factual inaccuracies from Bannon and how he didn’t ask him to explain certain statements.
Host Alyssa Farah Griffin had a slightly different opinion, saying, “I’m intrigued by this,” before praising Newsom for previously doing a debate with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to push for “open-minded conversations.”
At this point, Goldberg cut in to relate the hosts’ support of controversial conversations to the purpose of The View, saying, “We always say that because we have those conversations…People believe that they know everything I think and believe, they don’t. But one of the ways that you learn what people believe is to hear them talk.”
Calling out the critics, she went on, “People always say, ‘You should take The View off television.’ You know why? Because we give you an opportunity. We don’t tell you what to think. We say, ‘This is what I think!’”
“And when we do that, that is how you have the dialog. It’s not personal,” Goldberg went on, praising the show’s ability to encourage healthy debate.
She then noted how The View differs from Newsom’s latest podcast episode, which included questionable comments from his guest.
Regarding “open-minded conversations,” she said, “it becomes an awful thing when people become personal about you or your family. See, that’s the difference. We don’t do that here.”
“You can’t get out there calling names. Name-calling is not okay. And Gavin should know better,” she concluded.
