The View panelists Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin clashed Monday over politics on the ABC series, with Whoopi Goldberg simmering things down as the conversation grew tense.
Hostin, 56, and Griffin, 35, – who have sparred before on the topic – were reacting to a segment broadcast Friday on Real Time With Bill Maher, which touched on reasons President-elect Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in decisive fashion earlier this month.
Hostin said she disagreed with Maher’s opinion that Democrats were deceptively playing up racism as a factor in Trump’s defeat of Harris, saying that it did play a role, in addition to sexism.
‘I know that, as a country, it’s very difficult for people to believe that racism and misogyny, they’re just alive and well,’ Hostin said.
Hostin, a one-time federal prosecutor, said that her life experience told her that racism and sexism ‘does still exist, even if your lived experience doesn’t tell you that it exists.’
As a graph depicting election stats was showing a drastic difference in voting tendencies between people of color and white people supporting Trump, Hostin noted that educated people also largely voted for the Democratic candidate.
The View panelists Sunny Hostin, 56, and Alyssa Farah Griffin, 35, clashed Monday over politics on the ABC series
‘It’s not only clear by race, it’s also clear by education,’ Hostin said. ‘Those who attended college voted for her at a higher degree than those who didn’t.’
Griffin said she disagreed, saying that economics ultimately worked against Harris, who would have been the country’s first female president if elected.
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The one-time Trump staffer said that the ‘biggest common denominator in this election was that people want a good life and ability to provide for their family.’
Griffin said that ‘there was a split’ in Black voters specifically, who posted ‘historically’ high voting totals in favor of the Republican candidate this election cycle.
Griffin said Hostin’s theory that the ‘vast majority in this country voted because of racism and misogyny’ was misguided, while Hostin retorted that the statistics backed up her point of view.
Griffin told Hostin there were no discernible stats that indicated how many white people ‘voted for Donald Trump because of racism.’
As the discussion grew more heated, the show’s host Whoopi Goldberg, 69, intervened.
She told both parties to ‘take a breath’ and ‘take a beat’ amid the testy discussion.
Hostin said she disagreed with Bill Maher’s opinion that Democrats were deceptively playing up racism as a factor in Trump’s defeat of Harris, saying that it did play a role, in addition to sexism
Hostin, a one-time federal prosecutor, said that her life experience told her that racism and sexism ‘does still exist, even if your lived experience doesn’t tell you that it exists’
Griffin said Hostin’s theory that the ‘vast majority in this country voted because of racism and misogyny’ was misguided
As the discussion grew more heated, the show’s host Whoopi Goldberg, 69, intervened
The show’s Ana Navarro, 52, said that while she likes Maher and has been on his HBO show, his point of view was limited to his own life experience.
‘Maybe, just maybe, when you live life as a woman and as a woman of color, you feel it and you know it a little bit more than a white man does in America,’ Navarro said.
She noted, ‘I think most people are not saying that it was all about not about sexism and it was all about racism – most people are not saying that.’
‘He says that folks see everything from racism and sexism – not everything. But if you’re not seeing racism and sexism in America, then you need to clean your lenses.’
The View can be seen weekdays on ABC at 11/10c.