With Election Day 2024 bearing down, ABC’s The View infamously and inadvertently helped to sink Vice President Kamala Harris’s (D) bid for the White House with a softball question from co-host Sunny Hostin. In an announcement made during Tuesday’s episode, the liberal ladies seemed to be attempting a mea culpa by having Harris on their show next week to hawk her new book about her failed campaign, where she’ll blame everyone else but herself.
After they took Harris’s side amid the Democratic Party infighting exposed in the book during previous conversation had on the show, moderator Whoopi Goldberg excited announced Harris’s appearance following their opening segment on Tuesday:
And we want to let viewers know that next Tuesday, September 23rd, we are being joined at this table –At this very table, Joy, by former Vice President Kamala Harris. For the first time since the presidential election. She'll be here. We'll be here. I hope you'll join us all because we want to hear what she has to say.
It’s been over a year since the liberal ladies of The View have had a real conservative guest on the show to talk politics, but it’s Harris’s second appearance in less than a year.
During Harris’s first appearance in October 2024, the then-Vice President embarrassingly stumbled when asked by Hostin how she would be different from President Biden in his first and only term:
HOSTIN: And he said there wasn't a single thing that he did that you could not do. What do you think would be the biggest specific difference between your presidency and a bidency -- a Biden presidency?
HARRIS: Well obviously, we're two different people.
(…)
HOSTIN: If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?
HARRIS: There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of – and I've been part of most of the decisions that have had impact.
Harris’s answer went viral and made its way into Trump campaign ads. Many gave it credit for sinking her campaign, or at least putting the final nail in the coffin as Election Day approached.
It was clear that that perception haunted Hostin, a major Harris fan girl. During an interview with President Biden to help counter the book written in part by CNN’s Jake Tapper about Biden’s mental decline, Hostin sought absolution from the responsibility of hurting Harris (Click "expand"):
HOSTIN: … [W]hen the Vice President was here, I asked her if she would have done something differently than your administration over the past four years. And because of all the successes that your administration had, I think her response was ‘there is not a thing that comes to mind.’ Now, that answer was weaponized against her, and there has been some reporting that you encouraged her for there to be no daylight between the two of you.
First, is that true, and do you think in retrospect she should have tried to differentiate all the wins that your administration had?
BIDEN: Well, look, first of all, I did not advise her to say that. Number one. Like I said, I was vice president. I understand the role.
In a live June episode of their Behind the Table Podcast, Hostin opened up about feeling guilty about harming Harris, saying: “I feel terrible.”
Also stating: “I knew it instantly when she answered it, which is why I asked the follow up question. ‘Is there one thing?’ You know, because I – I – I knew I – I just, I could see the sound bite and I knew what was gonna happen, but I thought it was a really fair question, and I thought it was a question that she would expect.”
With Harris’s second appearance, expect Hostin to make similar pleads directly to the idol she harmed. Perhaps Hostin would even make a grand show of taking Harris’s side in the Democratic Party infighting as an act of penance.
