‘The View’ Hosts Face Backlash After Comments About First Lady Melania Trump

First Lady Melania Trump’s spokeswoman blasted The View after the hosts mocked her response to the anonymous op-ed written by a member of President Donald Trump’s staff that appeared in the New York Times this week.

During Friday’s episode, Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Abby Huntsman and Sunny Hostin discussed the White House’s response to the op-ed. Hostin jokingly said she liked the First Lady’s response, but before she could read it, Goldberg stopped her.

“Do not do it… don’t do it,” Goldberg said.

“Oh, I can’t do an accent,” Hostin agreed.

“Yeah, we know. That’s why we’re telling you. Don’t do it,” Goldberg reminded her.

Hostin then read Trump’s statement without doing an accent, but still mocked what she wrote.

“Freedom of speech is an important pillar of our nation’s founding principles and a free press is important to our democracy. The press should be fair, unbiased and responsible,” Trump’s statement to CNN read. “To the writer of the op-ed — you are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions.”

“Who wrote that? Michelle Obama?” Behar asked after Hostin finished reading.

“I recall that Melania was also a birther. Right?” Hostin said. “Weren’t those words very important and accusations very important?”

Hostin continued, “It was pretty rich that she came out with this statement.

“How about, ‘I really don’t care, do you?’ How about those words?” Behar chimed in.

Stephanie Grisham, the director of communications for the First Lady, later retweeted a Raw Story link to The View video, adding, “[Raw Story] If by ‘destroy’ you mean being disrespectful & hypocritical while mocking someone’s accent, then the ‘ladies’ of [The View] succeeded. And btw [Hostin], her title is [FLOTUS].”

Some of the responses to Grisham’s tweet sided with the First Lady and included insults to the View hosts. “[By the way], [The View] none of you can speak English never mind 6 languages. English is her last language. Get off her nuts [because] she is smarter than all of you combined. Granted, that is not super tough to do. Putting all of your IQ’s together and channeling it into elec could toast bread,” one person wrote.

Others disagreed with Grisham, disputing the idea that anyone on The View disrespected Trump.

On Wednesday, the New York Times published an anonymous op-ed written by a “senior official in the Trump administration” who claimed to be part of a “resistance inside” the White House.

After it was published, President Trump issued a one-word tweet reading “Treason?” He then called on the Times to reveal the identity of the writer for “National Security purposes.”

“Does the so-called ‘Senior Administration Official’ really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source?” Trump tweeted. “If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”

Photo credit: ABC/Lorenzo Bevilaqua