Monday on The View, the two most liberal hosts made a claim so absurd it begged the question: What world are they living in?
The audacious claim came during a discussion on media bias and President Trump. While libertarian host Jedediah Bila pointed out conservatives’ complaints about left-wing media bias in general, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar brought it directly to Trump, arguing that the media couldn’t be biased, because they covered Trump positively.
After most of the hosts complained about Steve Bannon’s comments to CBS, host Jedediah Bila argued Bannon’s appeal to conservatives was based on him “taking on the media establishment:”
JEDEDIAH BILA: I think he has managed to appeal to a segment of the country on the media issues. When he emerged he took over Breitbart from Andrew Breitbart and Andrew Breitbart’s main thing was taking on the media establishment. He took that over and I think he appealed to the sentiment that people, that many in the country felt that the media was on the side of the left. And they were now in a battle,, not with Democrats, not with Republicans, but with the media and with a Republican establishment in there who were basically voting with Democrats and weren’t standing up --
SUNNY HOSTIN: But he embraced white nationalists, he embraced white supremacists, Jed.
BILA: I don't know that he embraced white supremacists.
After host Sara Haines complained that the media wasn’t one united entity, Bila argued that conservatives look at “the majority of coverage” to determine which side of the political aisle media reporting leans to.
Whoopi then shot back that “they couldn’t have done that,” because “the majority of coverage” for Trump has been positive. When Bila disagreed, Joy Behar and Whoopi said she was wrong:
SARA HAINES: Does he think the media has a meeting every week, where we all sit together like the babysitter’s club? Do you know how big media is yet they get mad when we say all conservatives or all democrats?
BILA: What they look at is the majority of coverage on things and they feel--
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Except they couldn't had done that. Because had they looked at the majority of coverage they would have seen that the present guy -- the new guy that’s in the White House got more coverage than anybody ever got.
BILA: He got bad coverage.
BEHAR: No he didn’t!
WHOOPI: No, no-
BEHAR: No he did not!
WHOOPI: I’m sorry, I'm sorry. Did you see the--
BILA: He got a lot of bad coverage.
WHOOPI: I'm sorry baby but--
BILA: He deserved a lot of it because it was from his own actions but--
WHOOPI: He didn’t get a lot of bad coverage. The bad coverage that he got--
BEHAR: Exposure. He got a lot of exposure.
BILA: He got a lot of exposure. That's true.
HAINES: He didn't have to pay the Russians for the Facebook ads.
WHOOPI: When the president -- when the guy that runs CBS says hey bad for the country but great for us. He meant that. He meant that. He was on CBS, ABC, NBC, L-M-N-O-P. It was round the clock coverage 24/7 on this man. The only time it started to get a little murky is when the coochy bleep ] grab. That's when it started getting bad. Up until then it was 24/7 D.T. the whole time. That’s what I’m talking about.
Whoopi has made this claim on the show before. Back in May, she audaciously claimed that President Obama had worse media coverage than President Trump. Not even a month later, she argued to guest Newt Gingrich, that “98%” of Trump’s coverage by the media was positive.
Today’s discussion moved on from Trump’s media bias to Sarah Palin’s. Bila brought up that conservatives’ media bias complaints “began” with how the media treated Palin. The rest of the panel responded by mocking Palin as deserving of the negative coverage she got, with hosts Sunny Hostin and Joy Behar even repeating debunked “quotes” from Palin:
BILA: That media battle with the right did not begin with Trump. It actually began with Sarah Palin, and the media coverage that they felt was heinous towards her. Some of which I agree with.
HAINES: That was a character---
WHOOPI: They should have picked better and vetted her so that they knew.
[applause] The only problem with the right really had was they had no idea who she was.
BILA: Some of that media coverage on her was terrible.
HOSTIN: She said she could see Russia from her house. There was that too.
To Whoopi’s credit, she fact-checked Hostin for that false statement. But that didn’t seem to matter to Joy Behar, who repeated the lie again like a broken record:
WHOOPI: She never actually said that.
HOSTIN: Well...
BEHAR: When you got out there and you say crazy things and stupid stuff like you can see Russia from your house.
WHOOPI: She didn't say it.
BEHAR: Or build the wall over and over again-- so they covered that.
Bila repeated her point, that how the media covered Palin was a “media battle I have not seen in centuries,” before they went to commercial.
