While protecting Joe Biden, CNN hosts and the Obama administration from any criticism has become a mainstay of The View, the liberal hosts have shown, at the same time, they have no shame in demonizing and attacking regular people just trying to make a living. On Monday’s show, the hosts spoke with Dallas hair salon owner Shelley Luther, who was put in jail and fined because she reopened her business during the state’s lockdown. While expressing sympathy to her case on Friday’s show, the liberal hosts did a complete 180 while speaking with her Monday, insisting she should apologize and even blamed her for causing a spike in coronavirus cases in her state.
After playing the court video clip where State District Judge Eric Moye sentenced Luther to 7 days in prison for refusing to “apologize” for breaking the state’s lockdown orders, co-host Whoopi Goldberg sided with the judge. She tried to guilt trip Luther, saying she should apologize to health care workers, instead:
Right, and they say you could have avoided jail time if you had apologized to the judge. Do you think there's anybody that you should apologize to outside of the judge like, you know, the folks that are working so hard on the front lines, folks like that. Do they, you know, is it something you would have done for them as opposed to saying to part of the government that wouldn't open up?
Luther took the criticism in stride, pointing out that she was appreciative of her friends in the health care field but felt the rules of which businesses were deemed “essential” were unfair, and she was taking stricter safety measures than other businesses that were allowed to be open.
But she wasn’t done being grilled by the co-hosts. Sunny Hostin chided her for receiving a government check two days before her court date as evidence that she should’ve been able to stay afloat. After Luther argued the situation wasn’t as clear cut as Hostin was presenting, Hostin tried again. This time, she claimed that people like Luther were causing a rise in coronavirus cases in Texas:
Shelley, coronavirus cases are already rising in Texas and across the country where restrictions have been lifted, and you're worried about your staff and your customers. I mean, I would assume you're worried about your staff and your customers getting sick since there's now an uptick because of people not following the rules like yourself.
But Luther effectively dismantled Hostin’s talking points:
Well, I think that the -- there's a rise in the covid cases because there's more testing available and that has been discussed before. So we expected a rise in the cases. What we need to look at is the number of deaths, if that is plateauing at all, and to make sure that we have room in our hospital beds, and Texas has plenty of room in their beds and are able to care for the people that need to come in at this time. As a matter of fact, there's doctors and nurses getting furloughed because there's not enough work.
As the interview came to a close, Whoopi tried one last time to berate the salon owner, saying she should be calling out the government for not taking care of people, instead:
...I would like to hear you put some of that fury and that passion towards the governments that didn't take care of the people because that's what they're supposed to do.So I want you to get out there and fight for all those folks who are not getting what they're supposed to be getting, and not getting the information that they need, and then I think I'll feel better about watching you tell people 'I'm feeding my people.'
As for Meghan McCain, she took a more sympathetic approach, (Behar didn't ask any questions.) She began the interview asking Luther why she reopened her salon and later asked what it meant to her to have Senator Ted Cruz come in for a hair cut this past weekend. While telling The View hosts she was grateful for the support, she was more effusive in an interview with a local news outlet. She reportedly broke down in tears of gratitude for the senator’s support and thanked his family for calling her boyfriend to pray with him when she was in jail.
See a partial transcript, below:
The View
5/11/2020
….
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Right, and they say you could have avoided jail time if you had apologized to the judge. Do you think there's anybody that you should apologize to outside of the judge like, you know, the folks that are working so hard on the front lines, folks like that. Do they, you know, is it something you would have done for them as opposed to saying to part of the government that wouldn't open up?
LUTHER: That's a good question, Whoopi. Of course, I'm appreciative and have friends that are, you know, the real heroes in this situation that are on the front lines and doing what they need to do in order to keep us all safe, but when I have other businesses like the pet groomer next door that's been essential, quote/unquote, the entire time, you can buy CBD oil, you can go to Home Depot and buy flowers, I mean, 200 people in the garden section, I didn't see why it would be any different for me to open up using much safer guidelines than what was -- what they were doing.
HOSTIN: Shelley, you know, we do know that so many Americans are facing financial hardship because of this pandemic, but you applied for small business loans and unemployment, and you did receive some aid from the government. You received $18,000 from the government. So I understand why people feel so strongly about going back to work because they feel that the government isn't doing its job and taking care of people, but in this instance, two days before you went to court, the money went into your account. So I'm troubled by that.
LUTHER: I can see why you would be troubled. What happened was I already had the court date, and I had already had been open the entire time. There was $18,000 dropped in my bank account with no notice of what it was. So I get no instructions. I think it's one of the loans, but I don't know how I'm supposed to spend it, what I'm supposed to spend it on. I know there's guidelines and regulations to that, and I didn't want to put myself in deeper debt by spending it the wrong way, you know, and also having to close the salon. So until I got further instruction on that, I didn't want to spend it, and giving me $18,000 to spend when my stylists aren’t actual employees of mine, they're actually subleasing. So I wasn't sure if I was even able to give them any of that money as employees because I don't pay them.
….
HOSTIN: Shelley, coronavirus cases are already rising in Texas and across the country where restrictions have been lifted, and you're worried about your staff and your customers. I mean, I would assume you're worried about your staff and your customers getting sick since there's now an uptick because of people not following the rules like yourself.
LUTHER: Well, I think that the -- there's a rise in the covid cases because there's more testing available and that has been discussed before. So we expected a rise in the cases. What we need to look at is the number of deaths, if that is plateauing at all, and to make sure that we have room in our hospital beds, and Texas has plenty of room in their beds and are able to care for the people that need to come in at this time. As a matter of fact, there's doctors and nurses getting furloughed because there's not enough work.
WHOOPI: Okay. Well, the one thing that I do want to point out, Shelley, before we go is that, you know, I understand why you did what you did, but I would like to hear you put some of that fury and that passion towards the governments that didn't take care of the people because that's what they're supposed to do. So I want you to get out there and fight for all those folks who are not getting what they're supposed to be getting, and not getting the information that they need, and then I think I'll feel better about watching you tell people I'm feeding my people. I get it. We thank you for coming in, Shelley. We’ll be right back.
LUTHER: I sure will.
