Sparks Fly as 'The View' Hosts Get Into On-Air Meltdown: 'Sunny Likes to Make it Personal!'
A debate on ABC’s “The View” descended into a chaotic mess on Wednesday morning when co-host Sunny Hostin took a disagreement about politics and turned it into a personal attack against colleague Alyssa Farah Griffin.
Hostin came unglued while Griffin appeared to learn in real-time that no amount of apologizing for her employment in the Trump administration will make her good enough in the eyes of the left.
The show’s token conservative was then-Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director from 2017 to 2019 and was an assistant to then-President Donald Trump until 2020.
She has put as much distance as she could between that work and her current roles at ABC and CNN in an obvious attempt to fit in.
During an argument about the long-shot candidacies of both Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, however, no amount of Griffin’s prior groveling mattered.
In the segment, she said Pence’s candidacy “just underscores how truly unfit for office Donald Trump is” and Christie is “not running to win, he’s on a kamikaze mission to take out Donald Trump” and “save the party for the future.”
Hostin, however, attacked the former governor, calling him “spineless” and “soulless” and saying he just “wants power.”
She then set her sights on Griffin.
“But what scares me, Alyssa, is that you are incapable of defending a man that you worked for,” Hostin said.
“Why don’t you ask me a question?” Griffin interjected.
“I did ask you a question,” host Joy Behar said.
“I had a point I wanted to make,” Griffin said as a shouting match ensued.
“And you said that you needed to hear more from him,” Hostin went on. “I don’t need to hear more from Pence for several reasons.”
“Well, you just accused me of something, so why don’t you let me actually answer?” Griffin said.
“No, I’m going to finish what I’m going to say,” Hostin responded.
She added, “The thing about Pence here is, when I lived in Indiana and I went to Notre Dame, he had a terrible approval rating because of the way he treated the AIDS crisis.
“Awful. A lot of people died because of him. A lot of people died because of how he handled the COVID crisis.”
Griffin cut in to tell Hostin, “You defended [leftist third-party presidential candidate] Cornel West yesterday, who would destroy our country, so…”
Behar then interrupted, saying, “Don’t make this person. Let’s hear –”
A visibly uncomfortable Griffin responded, “Sunny likes to make it personal with me, so we’ll just — Are you gonna give me a chance to answer?”
Hostin kept speaking.
“I mean, this is absurd,” Griffin said. “This is not what the show is about. This is Barbara Walter’s legacy. Let a woman speak.”
That brought a smattering of applause.
The tense discussion continued until Whoopi Goldberg announced she was taking the show to a commercial break.
Wednesday’s below-the-belt comments were the second time this week Hostin has cited Griffin’s work in the Trump administration during a personal smear.
Oddly, Hostin was mostly quiet Tuesday as Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina mopped the floor with her on the issue of “systemic racism.”
Perhaps she viewed Griffin as a vulnerable target at which she could direct her seething hatred for the right.
In any event, it’s difficult to feel bad for Griffin.
The role of token ABC conservative comes with a paycheck and some unspoken rules.
People in that position are only there to offer the appearance the network cares about both sides of any given issue. At the end of the day, they are viewed as second-class citizens.
Griffin, no matter how much she disavows Trump and conservative voters in public, will never be viewed by her ABC colleagues as a peer.
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