If ABC’s The View was known for anything, it was that the six co-hosts were loud and very opinionated. But for two airings, on Thursday and Friday, the liberal ladies had not so much as alluded to the story which dominated much of the liberal media’s time and fearmongering in the latter part of the week: ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. Instead, there seemed to be an undercurrent of angst as their infamous “Hot Topics” segments came off as a bit blunted and they covered bizarre things like hyping their WikiFeet scores.
Not long before going their summer hiatus, The View was very vocal in their defense of “comedian” Stephen Colbert after CBS announced that they were canceling his show. “Because it’s very clear that if it is political, this is the dismantling of our democracy. This is the dismantling of our Constitution,” Hostin declared at the time. “That means the very rubric of our democracy is being dismantled. And I think every single person should be really, really concerned about it.”
A pretty strong statement for them to not say something when the suspension was in their own house at ABC. Perhaps recent comments from FCC Chairman Brendon Carr taking aim at The View had them spooked, but they’ve also boasted that they weren’t afraid of the Trump administration. Or perhaps, they were spooked the Disney and ABC executives who suspended Kimmel; the same ones who scolded them once before that they needed to tone down their rhetoric or face consequences.
Despite Kimmel’s suspension being announced the night prior, the Hot Topics conversations on Thursday only focused on the congressional hearings of FBI Director Kash Patel and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. respectively.
Joy Behar did seem brave enough to take a swing at President Trump while mocking Patel. “You know, Trump famously said he likes the poorly educated. He also seems to like the unqualified and the uninformed. I mean if the FBI director does not know the information, who is supposed to know, my dentist?” she chided.
Sunny Hostin also seemed brave when she suggested that Kennedy had committed perjury. Although, she did seem to hedge it (Click “expand”):
Can I say to the testimony that we just saw from RFK Jr. and also from the former director of the CDC, when I used to interview people as a federal prosecutor, one of the first things I said was, “By the way, I’m a federal prosecutor, lying to a federal prosecutor is a crime. Punishable — it’s called perjury and it’s punishable by five years in federal prison. Let’s now begin our interview.
And I’m not saying that anyone lied in front of Congress, but lying to Congress is a federal crime. And so, that distinction between what happened between the human health services head and the former head of the CDC is something that I think the Justice Department should look into.
Also during that episode, they had a segment where they discussed the notion of whether or not you should experience a break up with someone before you marry them.
Friday episodes of The View were often pre-recorded on Thursdays. The show’s relatively recent move to stop announcing which episodes were recorded live, made it difficult to precisely ascertain the timelines for then new shows were recorded in relation to breaking news. In this case, Carr’s suggestion that The View could be under the microscope.
The only Hot Topics segment they did on Friday’s episode was once again about former Vice President Kamala Harris’s new book about the 2024 presidential election. Pitched as a preview of what they’ll discuss with Harris during her appearance on the show next Tuesday, they talked about her regret of not picking former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to be her running mate.
In the most heated part of the conversation, Hostin tried to cry racism and sexism as usual, but there seemed to be an even stronger effort to hedge (Click “expand”):
HOSTIN: I too wish that the Vice President had gone with her gut because I think Pete Buttigieg would have been — could have been a game changer. But I also know – through my lived experience as a black woman in this country – that that is what people see first when they see you, not you perhaps [points to Sara Haines], perhaps not you [points to Alyssa Farah Griffin], but a lot of people see that and they define me by that, and that is unfortunately a fact of life here.
BEHAR: But they did vote for a black guy twice.
HOSTIN: Yes, they did but not a black woman. Okay? Hillary Clinton arguably was the most qualified candidate for the presidency that we’ve had, perhaps. [Applause] And they couldn’t get past that.
After they ended that segment, they discussed Martha Stewart’s thirst traps and their WikiFeet scores; WikiFeet being the website were creepy people posted images of celebrities’ feet and rate them. Hostin had all their scores: “Joy, you score a 4.07 out of five … Ana, 4.38 … Alyssa, 4.43. Sunny, 4.46. Sara, 4.83.”
And out of their five guests over the course of those two days, none of them discussed politics.
