The set of ABC talk show The View grew a bit tense on Friday as co-host Sunny Hostin chastised her fellow panelists for sticking with the Republican Party, telling them in no uncertain terms that they were “complicit” in causing division and harm in the country.
During a segment that was ostensibly about former President Donald Trump begging his supporters to buy him a new plane, former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham—who has served as The View’s conservative guest-host all week—noted that the ex-president is “doing everything he can to get paid” by his fanatical MAGA base.
“I want those people to know that he laughs at them behind closed doors,” Grisham added. “I want people to know that, and I used to be there. I believed.”
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Immediately pushing back on Grisham, co-host Ana Navarro—an anti-Trump Republican pundit—confronted the ex-Trump flack on her apparent willingness to look the other way during her time at the White House.
“For years you heard him do this, right? Laugh behind closed doors. So why did it take so long to find it so objectionable?” Navarro wondered, prompting Hostin to exclaim: “I asked the same thing!”
Grisham, who has been on a months-long apology tour to rehabilitate her public image, asserted that she has repeatedly criticized Trump and his actions since leaving his administration following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Additionally, Grisham said as a “single mom” with “bills to pay,” she needed the job at the time and knew there would be few opportunities afforded her due to her tarnished reputation.
“I believed in him and half the country believed in him,” Grisham continued. “I think that when you keep attacking me, you’re attacking a lot of people out there who might want an off-ramp.”
After Navarro insisted she wasn’t attacking Grisham but merely “holding accountable all the people” associated with Trump, and Grisham agreed while saying she’d do everything she can “to make sure he’s not elected again, Hostin took issue with both of her co-hosts GOP allegiance.
“If we’re going to talk, let’s talk real,” she exclaimed, adding that it was “bizarre” to her that both Grisham and Navarro are still Republicans.
“Why are you as a Latina still part of the Republican Party?” Hostin first asked Navarro, before turning to Grisham. “And why are you, having seen it first-hand, still part of the Republican Party?”
When both women tried to tell Hostin that Trump’s not the GOP, the longtime View host brushed them off by claiming that 80 percent of Republicans believe that he is the face of the party.
“I think the worst thing that can happen to a minority group is to have one party take you for granted and think you’re going to vote for them because they have no other option, and to have another party that openly attacks and antagonizes you,” Navarro retorted, adding: “And so I hope that one day there are two healthy parties competing for our vote and earning our support. Not taking one for granted and antagonizing the other. That doesn’t help anybody.”
Citing GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, liberal co-host Joy Behar backed Navarro’s position, saying “it's important to fight within the party.”
Hostin, however, remained unswayed.
“You know, I think that there’s a time to cut bait,” she said as the segment concluded. “And I think when you have a party that is so sick and so divisive, and so harmful to this country, I think staying in that party makes you complicit.”
