The View moderator Whoopi Goldberg had to step in to shut down a heated argument between new Season 26 co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sunny Hostin over the latter’s “roaches voting for Raid” comparison during Tuesday’s episode of the ABC daytime talk show.
The Oscar winner was forced to step in when Griffin brought up Hostin’s controversial statement in Thursday’s show surrounding abortion rights in the U.S. after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. “What’s also surprising to me is the abortion issue. I read a poll just yesterday that white, Republican, suburban women are now going to vote Republican. It’s almost like roaches voting for Raid, right?” Hostin said in Thursday’s episode.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Tuesday, Griggin – a former Donald Trump associate – confronted Hostin: “Last week you called white Republican women cockroaches. You said they were acting like cockroaches,” she said, to which Hostin responded, “Actually, I didn’t. I used a simile. I used a metaphor.” As the two began to talk over one another, Goldberg interjected, raising her voice as she asked the two panelists to “tone it down a little bit” to allow people to hear what they were saying.
Hostin then explained, “My mother is a white woman, I wouldn’t say that. Second of all, what I used was a metaphor, really more a simile. I said white women Republicans, I just read a poll that the suburbans are now voting Republican, that is like roaches voting for Raid.” Griffin continued to interrupt, prompting Hostin to add, “Let me finish. That was John Leguizamo’s joke, a joke I used on this show a few weeks ago referring to Latinos, and no one had anything to say about it. The last thing I’ll say is I continued by saying, ‘Do they want to be in Gilead [of The Handmaid’s Tale]? Do they want to lose their rights?’ You are actually twisting what I said.”
Goldberg then stepped in again to try and calm things down, saying before a cut to commercial, “We’re going to break, I can’t take it. We’ll be right back.” When the show did return, Griffin admitted she “misquoted” Hostin initially, and elaborated on where she was coming from. “I misquoted Sunny, I think she clarified what she said: It was a simile, it was an analogy, it was not saying that white Republican women are bugs,” she said.
“I think the point I was trying to make is part of the left – not the entirety, some of my best friends worked for Barack Obama, I love many Democrats – but some on the left though have taken such a negative approach to people who view things differently,” she continued. “We talk about democracy at this table. My vote, my perspective, my voice, my lived experience matters as much as anyone else’s at this table, and this idea that because someone disagrees with you, we should be name-calling, we should be getting into low blows… the fact that we’re not comfortable with our kids watching our politics, that says a lot about all of us. We all have a duty – and I’m sure I’m guilty of it – of taking the tone down.”
