Do you remember being a kid and pleading to your parents “it was a joke” when getting caught in a lie or saying something nasty to someone? Well, that was the reaction moderator Whoopi Goldberg had when ABC News forced her to correct a lie she spewed on Monday’s episode of The View. Goldberg raged, tore up the note (not a legal note), and whined about how she had to be held accountable for the lies she told and blamed it on the people watching.
The comment that got Goldberg in hot water was a lie about how President Trump, according to her, used and autopen to sign a pardon for a crypto bro with connections to his sons:
HOSTIN: The Trump family has made about $1.8 billion profited off of this government and he said that Joe Biden didn't know who he was pardoning using an autopen. How come you don't know who this guy is?
[Applause]
GOLDBERG: Because he used an autopen.
Of course, they misrepresented the point of the congressional autopen investigation. It wasn’t just the use of an autopen, it was about President Biden not being of sound mind and aides just putting documents in the machine for his signature without his knowledge.
A few minutes later, during the same segment, co-host Sunny Hostin not-so-discretely slipped Goldberg a note looking for her to voice the correction. Goldberg mumbled the correction before getting enraged, causing Hostin to reiterate the correction:
GOLDBERG: The other insane thing is that when people are going to go to their -- their meetings with the judge, the meetings that are -- they're supposed to go to, when there listening to – [Gets slipped a note] What the hell?! What?!
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: I love when Sunny passes notes.
GOLDBERG: We don't know if pen used – Trump used an autopen to pardon -- It was a joke!
HOSTIN: We don't know if Trump used an autopen to pardon –
GOLDBERG: Oh, come on!
[Starts tearing up note]
HOSTIN: - but we do know that he doesn't know who that crypto guy was.
Goldberg angrily tore up the note as she whined about being held accountable.
“The hardest thing about this job now is no one understands nuance,” she griped. “You know when you hear a joke, when somebody is fooling around, when they're not saying something specific. Especially on this show. I'm very specific when I'm -- when I'm pointing stuff out. When I'm making jokes you know when I'm making jokes! This is ridiculous!”
Whoopi. Where you joking when you and rest of The View claimed three time this year that the 2024 election was stolen by Trump and Elon Musk? Where you joking when you screamed on-air about Trump campaigning on breaking up interracial marriages and redistributing the white spouse? Were you joking on October 27 when you claimed Trump was a “dictator?” Where you joking when you told viewers not to think of Trump as human?
It’s worth noting that since the Media Research Center published a study in 2022 pointing out how many legal notes The View was forced to read (36 in one year), they’ve dropped to ZERO so far in 2025. Monday’s note does not count since they didn’t announce it as a “legal note.”
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
ABC’s The View
November 3, 2025
11:08:35 a.m. Eastern(…)
SUNNY HOSTIN: The Trump family has made about $1.8 billion profited off of this government and he said that Joe Biden didn't know who he was pardoning using an autopen. How come you don't know who this guy is?
[Applause]
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Because he used an autopen.
(…)
11:10:47 a.m. Eastern
GOLDBERG: The other insane thing is that when people are going to go to their -- their meetings with the judge, the meetings that are -- they're supposed to go to, when there listening to – [Gets slipped a note] What the hell? What?
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: I love when Sunny passes notes.
GOLDBERG: We don't know if pen used – Trump used an autopen to pardon -- it was a joke!
HOSTIN: We don't know if Trump used an autopen to pardon –
GOLDBERG: Oh, come on!
[Starts tearing up note]
HOSTIN: - but we do know that he doesn't know who that crypto guy was.
GOLDBERG: [Continues to tear up note] Well, I'm sorry. [Continues to tear up note] The hardest thing about this job now [Continues to tear up note] is [Continues to tear up note] no one understands nuance. You know when you hear a joke, when somebody is fooling around, when they're not saying something specific. Especially on this show. I'm very specific when I'm -- when I'm pointing stuff out. When I'm making jokes you know when I'm making jokes! This is ridiculous!
[Applause]
Anyhoo. [Continues to tear up note] The other thing that really [Continues to tear up note] upsets me about all of this is that when people do it legally, everybody bitched and moaned and said, “They’re not doing it legally, that’re not doing it- ’ So, people are showing up when they're supposed to be showing up at court and you're scooping them up for immigrant checks. This is how you treat them. How should we believe anything you're saying when we saw how the folks in Chicago were treated over the weekend?! We saw that!
(…)
