Whoopi Goldberg took her job as moderator of The View panel very seriously on Thursday’s (November 14) show. The first “Hot Topic” of the day this time was similar to what it’s been most of this week: reactions to the latest round of cabinet picks by Donald Trump.
In particular, the two nominees that the group wanted to discuss were now-former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who was under an ethics investigation for sex trafficking allegations until the moment he resigned but is now being put forward as potential Attorney General, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman who has been accused of being a Russian asset and is Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence.
“He’s not in yet, remember. None of these people are hired yet,” Goldberg said at the start of the discussion. “These are the people he would like. Everybody, calm down. It’s not happening yet, all right?” She then turned the matter over to her cohosts to discuss whether they should both be stopped in the confirmation process in the Senate.
Sunny Hostin came up to bat first to take a swing at Gaetz’s nomination, saying, “This was just a deeply unserious choice. As an alum of the Department of Justice, I mean, I don’t think people can underestimate just how powerful the Department of Justice really is. You have 40 different components [with] over 115,000 employees.” Hostin then went on to recount conversations she’s had with former colleagues at DOJ and said, “They’re sick about this.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who worked for Trump’s first administration, decided to share a story she remembered about Gaetz as he was heading into a meeting with Trump with a folder in hand. “I said, ‘What’s in this folder?’ He shows me these printed-out conspiracy theories that Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe [who’s also a] former congressman had murdered his staffer,” she explained. “And I said, ‘Please do not show these to the president of the United States.’ Then days ensued of Donald Trump tweeting false, malicious claims about Joe Scarborough. The family of the woman who died — and there was no foul play, it was a tragedy — begged Twitter and the White House to take it down. So that speaks to his character, integrity, and judgment.” Griffin went on to suggest that Gaetz is so “widely disliked” that Senators may reject him. Griffin also deeply criticized the selection of Gabbard saying, “The intelligence community’s terrified of her being the Director of National Intelligence, so the Senate Republicans need to muster the political will to block both of these because they are not good for the country.”
Sara Haines also suspected Gaetz may have a hard road to confirmation saying he’s “literally possibly the most hated man in Congress.”
Hostin went on to say that she feels like his selection process is “willy nilly” and “like he’s on The Apprentice.” She also slipped in yet another note of her lack of surprise over the selections, adding her increasingly familiar post-election refrain, “America is going to get the government that it voted for.”
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That’s when Goldberg reclaimed the mic, so to speak, to urge her colleagues and audiences not to leap into panic mode.
“Everybody has to take a breath because this is meant to wind everybody up, to freak everybody out, to make you all think, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ Whatever is going to happen, we’re going to handle it,” she said. After others discussed the Senate process for confirmations and how the filibuster may come into play, she returned right to that point. “This is life, right? It’s always the hanging sort of Damocles you got. You never know what’s going to happen. So all we can do is not freak our families out, not freak the kids out any more than they’re freaked out. Because everywhere you look, you hear what’s going on, and people are sick, and kids are feeling it.”
The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC
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