The great minds of The View are in dire need of not only a fact-checker but also a mirror, after what they claimed in today’s show. After largely staying away from politics for the past two weeks, Friday’s show opened with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar arguing that right-wing rhetoric on talk radio and in the Tea Party had caused the current divisiveness in politics. Not only that, but Goldberg again repeated an easily-disproven lie about a Republican that she has said before. Then again, nasty rhetoric and half-baked ideas are a staple on The View.
The show began with Paula Faris and Whoopi Goldberg lamenting about how politics had become so divisive. While Faris wouldn’t put either side to blame, Joy Behar jumped at the chance to pin the problem on talk radio and Whoopi tried to put the blame on the Tea Party.
JOY BEHAR: The venom started in the early '90s. With basically talk radio started to get more and more powerful and right wing talk radio started to really pummel their position. And then Fox News came in with their sort of unbalanced right-wing position. And then you had MSNBC coming in with that left wing position so that's I think what happened. That's exactly what I think happened because previous to that Republicans and Democrats got along much better. They cooperated.
PAULA FARIS: So you’re saying it kind’ve created this divide?
BEHAR: Yes I think so
This isn’t the first time Behar has gone on a bender about talk radio. Before introducing her guest Hillary Clinton on the show in April, she claimed that right-wing talk radio was “bombarded with sexist remarks” that “penetrate the brain.”
Whoopi Goldberg jumped in here to add the Tea Party to the list of villains, calling the group “insidious.”
WHOOPI: I also think that it’s because there is an insidious third party. There is another party in there and they sort of tried to usurp the Republicans.
HOSTIN: The tea party.
WHOOPI: And they kind’ve disappeared--
HOSTIN: The tea party.
WHOOPI: The moderate Republicans all disappeared. So now we have the Tea Party and all of their rhetoric. I think that this disrespect just in general, I think you're probably right, a lot of it started with, my country, you know right or wrong and if you're not me you're not a real American that all came about I think in the '90s.
The View crew is seemingly, blissfully unaware of their own vicious rhetoric used on a near-daily basis for twenty years now. Just in the past month alone they’ve called former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani “nutty” and a “lunatic;” claimed Mike Pence was “incompetent” and “misogynistic” for his conservative views on global warming and abortion; said that they couldn’t “get mad that the system was rigged against the white guy” and claimed that reading the Republican party platform was like reading “Mein Kampf.”
Goldberg also repeated a lie she had said on the show three weeks ago about Mitch McConnell making a comment about trying to get Obama out of office “five minutes after Obama was elected.” Today, she modified the claim by saying it happened, “the day after [Obama] was elected.” Not true, not even a little bit. McConnell’s comment, about wanting to make sure they got a Republican in office for the next election, was made a full two years into President Obama’s first term. But really, small technicality right?
