It’s time for another NewsBusters Time Machine. A new book about ABC’s long-running show The View features a former producer calling then-host Rosie O’Donnell “medically insane.” This might not be a revelation if one just watched the show. Twelve years ago this week, on March 29, 2007, ABC gave O’Donnell a platform to promote her unhinged 9/11 conspiracy theories.
In a heated discussion about the Middle East, token conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck pressed O’Donnell: “Do you believe that the government had anything to do with the attack of 9/11? Do you believe in a conspiracy, in terms of the attack of 9/11?”
O'Donnell responded:
No. But I do believe the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself, it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved, World Trade Center Seven. World Trade Center one and Two got hit by planes. Seven, miraculously, for the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible.
Of course, O’Donnell is completely wrong here. As Popular Mechanics explained, “Experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength—and that required exposure to much less heat.”
Hasselbeck pressed the TV personality on her “theory”:
ELISABETH HASSELBECK: And who do you think is responsible for that?
O’DONNELL: I have no idea. But to say that we don't know it was imploded, that there was implosion in the demolition, is beyond ignorant. Look at the film. Get a physics expert here from Yale, from Harvard. Pick the school. It defies reason.
On May 14, 2007, O’Donnell would insinuate that Rudy Giuliani was involved in the 9/11 conspiracy. In 2013, View creator and executive producer Barbara Walters hired another conspiracy theorist, this time it was the anti-vaccine Jenny McCarthy.
A partial transcript is below:
The View
3/29/2007
ELISABETH HASSELBECK: Do you believe that the government had anything to do with the attack of 9/11? Do you believe in a conspiracy in terms of the attack of 9/11?
ROSIE O’DONNELL: No. But I do believe the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself, it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved, World Trade Center Seven. World Trade Center one and Two got hit by planes. Seven, miraculously, for the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible.
HASSELBECK: And who do you think is responsible for that?
O’DONNELL: I have no idea. But to say that we don't know it was imploded, that there was implosion in the demolition, is beyond ignorant. Look at the film. Get a physics expert here from Yale, from Harvard. Pick the school. It defies reason.
