‘The View’: Whoopi Goldberg Goes After Debra Messing and Eric McCormack for Recent Trump Supporter Comments

Whoopi Goldberg tackled a unique and complex issue on Tuesday morning in the season premiere of The View. The talk show host led a discussion on one of last week’s biggest stories, when Will and Grace stars Debra Messing and Eric McCormack called for a public list of celebrity Trump supporters. To Goldberg, this was not a productive idea.

The View hit the ground running this week when it returned from its summer break. As one might expect, there were emotional arguments over all the major stories the show has missed, but Goldberg reserved time for one a little more nuanced. Last week, Messing and McCormack publicly asked the press to list all of the attendees at a Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills, California.

While she is no supporter of the president herself, Goldberg did not see this as a righteous call for transparency. On the contrary, she compared Messing and McCormack’s tweets to the Hollywood blacklists of the 1940s and ’50s — the practice often referred to as McCarthyism. At the time, suspected communists and communist sympathizers were banned from the entertainment industry during the Cold War.

“Last time people did this, people started killing themselves. This is not a good idea,” Goldberg said. “Your idea of who you don’t want to work with, is your personal business. Do not encourage people to print out lists, the next list that comes out, your name will be on and people will be coming after you.”

“We had something called the blacklist and a lot of really good people were accused of stuff,” she continued. “Nobody cared whether it was true or not. They were accused and they lost their right to work. You don’t have the right, in this country, people can vote for who they want to, that is one of the great rights of this country. You don’t have to like it, but we don’t go after people because we don’t like who they voted for. We don’t go after them that way.”

In fairness, Goldberg did give Messing and McCormack the benefit of the doubt. She went out of her way to suggest that the actors had good intentions.

“We can talk about issues and stuff, but we don’t print out lists. I’m sure you guys misspoke when you said that because it sounded like a good idea,” she said. “Think about it, read about it, remember what the blacklist actually meant to people and don’t encourage anyone, anyone to do it.”

The conversation led to a rare agreement between co-hosts Meghan McCain and Joy Behar, who both agreed with Goldberg. Meanwhile, McCormack later took to Instagram to clarify his stance.

“I want to be clear about my social media post from last week, which has been misinterpreted in a very upsetting way,” he wrote. “I absolutely do not support blacklists or discrimination of any kind, as anyone who knows me would attest. I’d simply like to understand where Trump’s major donations are coming from, which is a matter of public record.”

I am holding myself responsible for making educated and informed decisions that I can morally and ethically stand by and to do that, transparency is essential,” he finished.

The View airs on weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC. Will and Grace returns for its 11th and final season this spring on NBC.