During Wednesday’s episode of The View, Whoopi Goldberg delivered an impassioned speech about the 800,000 federal employees who were left without paychecks during the government shutdown, before it ended on Friday.
Towards the end of a seven-minute long segment on the topic, Goldberg praised the hard work of those serving workers at food banks and shelters.
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“There are a lot of things we can do while we kvetch about all this other stuff that we can’t force [politicians] to do, well we, as American citizens, around this country can step up and help,” Goldberg said. “We can do it, because if we wait for them, people are going to lose their minds, and we don’t want that.”
Co-hosts Meghan McCain and Abby Huntsman both agreed with Goldberg.
“They are [in] very important jobs that protect us all,” Huntsman said. “That’s the saddest part about it.”
“No, the saddest part about it is that people who work for a living everyday… they work for a living… Sometimes, these folks have two or three jobs because it’s not enough to cover,” Goldberg interjected. “The fact that, like many things that happen in government, the real people are not taken into consideration, especially when it lasts a long time.”
Goldberg then turned to the audiences in the studio and at home and told them to help the government employees.
On Thursday, the voices of The View diverged on the topic of who to blame for the shutdown. Sunny Hostin and McCain argued about the Democrats’ role.
Two days after that segment was filmed, President Donald Trump finally agreed to a deal to re-open the government and keep it fully funded through Feb. 15. Trump previously rejected funding bills in December because they did not include $5.7 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The deal Trump agreed to on Friday did not include the funds either, but it did call for the creation of a bipartisan Congressional conference committee to create a new border security plan.
When announcing the deal from the Rose Garden Friday afternoon, Trump said employees will be receive back-pay as soon as possible. However, The Washington Post reports that the first paycheck might not come until next Thursday, Friday or Saturday as the Treasury Department gets to work again. A senior administration official told the Post that “recognizing the urgency of getting federal employees paid quickly, the administration is taking steps to ensure that they receive pay as soon as possible.”
The shutdown was the longest in U.S. history, lasting 35 days.
Huntsman and McCain are the two Republican voices on The View panel. Huntsman, a former Fox News anchor and the daughter of U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman, joined the show this season.
Photo credit: ABC
