Things got heated on The View Tuesday morning as the co-hosts addressed the racist remarks of Iowa Congressman Steve King, and the Republican party in general.
The hosts of The View seemed to be in agreement about King as the segment got started, each calling for him to step down and apologize. Still, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Meghan McCain were talking over each other within just a few minutes, trying to get their more nuanced points across. McCain, for one, resented the implication that King’s rhetoric might reflect on the party in general, and found herself reminding her co-workers whose daughter she is.
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“I condemn him, he should step down, he’s a racist and he’s bad for the party,” McCain said, swiveling her head as she addressed King. “It’s not hard.”
McCain even agreed that King should be censured if need be — “anything to get him the hell out of congress.” To McCain, issues of racism were all in the past, and she saw it as a waste of time for political analysts to “relive something I thought we passed by a long time ago.”
Hostin suggested that Republicans could match the “moral high ground” of the Democrats by forcing King to resign, as Senator Al Franken did last year. She then turned her gaze on a bigger target: President Donald Trump.
“Will Republicans now step up to the plate with Donald Trump?” she wondered. “He has been using, I think, the border wall as sort of this dog whistle for racism. The government is still shut down, and I think it’s all about, ‘let’s not let these brown people in.’”
Abby Huntsman quickly jumped in saying that “42 percent of this country… supports the wall. Are they all racist?”
“That’s a good question,” Hostin said. “I don’t know, is Donald Trump racist?”
This line of questioning seemed to frustrate McCain, who claimed that generalizing “all Republicans” was the same as generalizing about “all black people” and “all Hispanic people.” Before long, Whoopi Goldberg was attempting to break up another shouting match between Behar and McCain, who was hitting the table for emphasis.
“I’m John McCain’s daughter, I am not someone who sits here and is okay with racism in any way whatsoever,” she said at one point.
“And I am Gino Occhiuto’s daughter and I say he’s a racist!” Behar shot back.
The View continues to serve as a microcosm of American politics, hashing out some of the nation’s biggest discussions of the day around one table. Shouting matches between Behar and McCain are getting more and more common, and many fans are fired up by the disputes as well.
The View airs on weekdays at 11 a.m. on ABC.
