Donald Trump and The View’s co-hosts have been in a vicious verbal war for years. But after his decisive electoral victory last week, the show plans to beg him to return to the “Hot Topics” table.
The View will urge the President-elect to come on the show as soon as his communications team is in place, a source familiar with the ABC show‘s workings told the Daily Beast. Should he bite, he’ll face a panel of hosts who all endorsed Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris—and one whose question may have cost her the election.
But the show does not plan to add a pro-MAGA co-host, the source also revealed, claiming the current panel addresses pro-Trump voters effectively enough.
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The source also said the show had not been ordered to change tone–although a report in the New York Post Wednesday said ABC News bosses were in “panic mode” over Trump’s return to the presidency and planned to add a pro-Trump panelist to the table. An ABC News spokesperson told the Daily Beast the report was “not true,” and a source said the show planned to let administration officials deliver the Trump perspective.
“They do need to message to the American people,” the source told the Daily Beast about about the incoming Trump administration. “We have a huge audience, the biggest in daytime television, and we have a politically engaged audience that’s not reached by cable news.
“We’ll have pro-Trump voices on as guests throughout the administration,” the source insisted, saying that the invitation would be extended to Vice President-elect JD Vance, and Trump’s cabinet officials
The View’s current six co-hosts—Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, and conservatives Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin—have consistently opposed Trump. “We’re all in danger here,” Goldberg, who will not utter Trump’s name, said on-air after the presidential debate in September.
But their views had minimal electoral impact. Trump won the election and Republicans control the government, making The View just one of a series of elite media institutions such as MSNBC and especially its flagship Morning Joe, wrestling with a crisis of relevance.
Worse for The View, whose core audience is female, 45 percent of all women who voted went for Trump, according to New York Times exit polling.
But now the show is doubling down on resistance. When asked if The View was actively discussing plans for a pro-Trump or pro-MAGA voice on the panel, the source said there weren’t “any conversations about that.”
The source added, “This is our third year with this table, and stability on The View hasn’t always been the easiest thing to find, and they’re really connecting. There’s great chemistry.”
No love lost
The View has had outsized political influence for years. Barack Obama was the first sitting president to appear and his and Joe Biden’s aides were frequent guests.
Trump has appeared 18 times, 17 before he first ran for election and never since he won the White House in 2016. In those appearances he both told the birther lie that Obama was not born in the U.S. and showered the women with affection. “Whoopi, I love you!” he said in 2011.
Now no love is lost. Trump labeled the hosts “degenerates” in a Truth Social post last month, and called Goldberg “demented” and Hostin “one dumb woman” at a campaign rally.
But the show’s biggest political moment of all time was when Vice President Kamala Harris had her first live interview since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee last month and was asked by Hostin what she would do differently to Biden.
“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.
Democrats and Republicans have both suggested that may have cost her the campaign.
“I’d like to thank the ladies of the View,” Trump ally Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News last week. “Thank you very much for asking Kamala Harris simple easy questions that she couldn’t answer.”
Hostin told executive producer Brian Teta on the show’s companion podcast Beyond the Table on Tuesday that she wasn‘t trying to pose a “gotcha” question, though she was surprised at Harris' answer. “It goes to show how important this show is, in this country and actually internationally,” Hostin said.
“Radical progressive insane asylum”
Where The View goes next is now the biggest question it has faced since its creation by Barbara Walters.
Former co-host and chief View antagonist Meghan McCain derided the show on X last week as a “radical progressive insane asylum” and questioned why ABC News would not bring on a pro-Trump panelist.
“It is actual malfeasance on the part of ABC news that there isn’t one single conservative woman on The View this morning who voted for Trump or simply isn’t repulsed by his supporters to explain to America why he is still so popular,” she wrote the day after the election. McCain—ironically, avowedly anti-Trump—was a co-host from 2017 to 2021 and said last year she has not watched the show in years.
But so far, ratings have not been affected. The program‘s post-Election Day episode—half the hosts wore black—got 4.47 million viewers, according to Nielsen data, the biggest since Walters’ farewell episode in 2014. Last week also saw its largest average audience since January 2021, at 3.078 million viewers per show, and more than 20% gains in women ages 18-49 and women 25-54 from this time last year. Executives takes that as a signal viewers still want to hear what the hosts have to say.
Sources insisted Disney, The View’s ultimate owners, have not asked for changes.
“We really are just continuing to do exactly what we’ve always done,” the source said. “We come in the morning with the women and the different viewpoints and look at the news of the day and debate the headlines.”
This week some apparently pro-Trump views have sneaked in. On Tuesday, Farah Griffin expressed support for Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, as Secretary of State, and Mike Waltz the Florida Congressman as National Security advisor.
“I’m still unpacking a lot from the election, but one of the things that I think Donald Trump is seeing as a mandate from the election is securing the border and dealing with the crisis of immigration in this country,” Farah Griffin told her co-hosts.
The show has hosted pro-Trump guests in the past, including Republican senator Tim Scott and Donald Trump Jr., and it even invited Melania Trump as she promoted her memoir. She did not accept and went on Fox News.
The show plans to keep its finger on the political pulse with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appearing at the table on Nov. 22.
But the co-hosts are confident they have a viewer in Mar-a-Lago. “He’s clearly very focused on this show because we keep calling him out,” Griffin said on air last week. “And we’re going to keep doing it.”
