After remaining mum on fellow ABC host Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension final week, the hosts of “The View” on Monday spoke out towards the Trump administration’s latest crackdown on free speech.
“Did y’all really think we weren’t going to talk about Jimmy Kimmel? Have you watched the show over the last 29 seasons?” co-host Whoopi Goldberg mentioned at the highest of the printed. “No one silences us,” she mentioned.
Goldberg defined that the long-running daytime discuss present hadn’t addressed Kimmel’s indefinite suspension throughout Thursday’s and Friday’s broadcasts as a result of the co-hosts “took a breath to see if Jimmy was going to say anything about it first.”
While the co-hosts didn’t immediately assault ABC or its mum or dad firm Disney for benching Kimmel, they did sharply criticize what they described because the Trump administration’s assaults on the First Amendment.
Disney removed Kimmel from the air final week after Brendan Carr, the Trump-aligned Federal Communications Commission chairman, threatened to revoke ABC affiliate licenses over Kimmel’s feedback about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer.
“You can not like a show, and it can go off the air. Someone can say something they shouldn’t and get taken off the air,” Goldberg mentioned. “But the government cannot apply pressure to force someone to be silenced.”
Co-host Ana Navarro, who likened Trump’s assaults on the press to the actions of dictatorships she lived below in Nicaragua, expressed dismay at “how the government itself is using its weight and power to bully and scare people into silence.” She added: “This is what dictators and authoritarians do; it does not matter the ideology.”
“The First Amendment is the first for a reason, because you need to be able to hold those in power accountable,” mentioned co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump administration official-turned-critic.
Kimmel has but to publicly tackle his suspension. Meanwhile, “The View,” which is thought for its fiery, no-holds-barred criticism of President Trump, has come below its personal fireplace from the Trump administration.
In late July, FCC chair Carr told Fox News that the long-running discuss present was “in the crosshairs of this administration” due to co-host Joy Behar’s repeated assaults on the president.
And on Thursday, following Kimmel’s suspension, Carr advised NCS commentator Scott Jennings that it could be “worthwhile” for his company to additionally goal “The View.”
The co-hosts of “The View” didn’t tackle Carr’s threats on Monday. Instead, Goldberg ended the dialog by imploring viewers to face up totally free speech.
“We fight for everybody’s right to have freedom of speech because it means my speech is free, it means your speech is free,” Goldberg mentioned.