During a special recording of their Behind the Table podcast back on October 6 with their fans (with the first half released on October 19), The View cast again admitted that ABC News co-host Sunny Hostin intentionally wanted to “gift” the Kamala Harris campaign with the infamous softball question which accidentally sunk her chances. It was something that had been discussed multiple times, but a new facet of the story surfaced, they admitted that campaign staff were comfortable discussing the need for damage control in front of the cast between interview segments.
Executive producer Brian Teta was taking the cast down memory lane with some of their most embarrassing moments on the show. Of course, Hostin’s was this exchange with Vice President Kamala Harris just weeks before the 2024 presidential election:
HOSTIN: Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?
HARRIS: There is not a thing that comes to mind.
Reliving the question that finally sunk the Harris campaign, Sunny Hostin says she thought she was giving the "gift" of a softball question that could help her win.
Ana Navarro then seems to admit that there might have been an effort to coordinate an attempt at damage control… pic.twitter.com/eIm9kIdaCf— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 20, 2026
“Thanks for showing that, Brian,” she playfully chided. “You know. It became so infamous. People wrote books around that question.”
Hostin went on to once again explained that it was her intention to use ABC’s privileged access to the public broadcast spectrum to help get Harris elected by giving herself the opportunity to distance herself from an unpopular President Joe Biden. Co-host Sara Haines also admitted their audience was usually a good place for such messaging:
HOSTIN: I thought it was a gift. I thought - I was looking at his numbers, his approval ratings were so low, and I thought she's got a distance herself from him. Right? And so, what better venue in front of three million people that are her people then to ask her -
SARA HAINES: If you have an answer. It's a good audience.
HOSTIN: Yeah, you know, that then to ask her what would you do differently? And I actually thought the answer was going to be: ‘You know, we had a lot of wins in this administration. I was there for those wins. But I, as a woman of color, as a child of immigrants, as - I have a different lived experience and I intend to bring that lived experience with me into the White House. I will do this. I will do that. I will do this. I will do that. I will do that.’ That was what I was expecting. I was not expecting ‘not a single thing comes to mind.’
After Hostin and other cast member claim that they realized in the moment that Harris had bombed the question, co-host Ana Navarro added a new detail. This time, she asked the rest of them if they remembered oh Harris’s staff came running out during the next commercial break and openly discusses with the candidate that they needed to do damaged:
Don’t you remember? Her sta - We went into commercial break right after and her staff ran because they knew immediately that she needed to come back and do damage control. Which she tried, but it never - She didn’t control the damage.
It says a lot that Harris’s staff felt that comfortable openly discussing the need for damage control right next to the hosts doing the interview. Stemming from such events, it’s worth question how this open discussion for damage control helped to influence how the rest of the interview went, especially since it was admitted that they The View cast wanted to see Harris be elected president.
By Navarro's own account, it seemed as though the campaign staffers were trying to give the cast the hint-hint-nudge-nudge on what needed to be done to make it right.
The question and the results had haunted Hostin for a long time, according to her. Harris finally ‘absolved her’ of responsibility during a September 2025 appearance on the show to hawk her book about the campaign.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
ABC’s Behind the Table Podcast
October 6, 2026 (Recorded)
October 19, 2026 (Aired)
19:31 Timestamp(…)
SUNNY HOSTIN: Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?
VP KAMALA HARRIS: There is not a thing that comes to mind.
[Cuts back to live]
BRIAN TETA: So, that was a seminal moment in this last election cycle. Not the first time -
HOSTIN: Thanks for showing that, Brian.
TETA: Yeah, of course. But what do you think when you see that now?
HOSTIN: You know. It became so infamous. People wrote books around that question.
TETA: Kamala Harris wrote about it in her book.
HOSTIN: Yeah, and she did write about that question. I was -
ANA NAVARRO: It was a political ad. It was - Trump -
HOSTIN: It became - it became an ad. I thought it was a gift. I thought - I was looking at his numbers, his approval ratings were so low, and I thought she's got a distance herself from him. Right? And so, what better venue in front of three million people that are her people then to ask her -
SARA HAINES: If you have an answer. It's a good audience.
HOSTIN: Yeah, you know, that then to ask her what would you do differently? And I actually thought the answer was going to be: ‘You know, we had a lot of wins in this administration. I was there for those wins. But I, as a woman of color, as a child of immigrants, as - I have a different lived experience and I intend to bring that lived experience with me into the White House. I will do this. I will do that. I will do this. I will do that. I will do that.’
That was what I was expecting. I was not expecting ‘not a single thing comes to mind.’
TETA: Yeah.
HOSTIN: And I knew, honestly, when she said it that it was really problematic.
TETA: The Vice President said in her book, ‘I had no idea that she had pulled the pin on a hand grenade’ with that question.
HOSTIN: I knew.
TETA: Yeah, I think we all did actually.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: We all did.
[Crosstalk]
NAVARRO: Don’t you remember? Her sta - We went into commercial break right after and her staff ran -
TETA: Circled.
NAVARRO: - because they knew immediately that she needed to come back and do damage control. Which she tried, but it never -
TETA: Well so, we're not going to do too much -
NAVARRO: She didn’t control the damage.
TETA: - politics here tonight because we're gonna have fun.
(…)
