Two weeks after being suspended for saying there was nothing racial about the Holocaust, The View’s Whoopi Goldberg returned on Monday and immediately addressed the elephant in the room.
“Yes, I am back,” Goldberg declared at the top of her first show since ABC News president Kimberly Godwin announced the talk show co-host’s sidelining to “reflect” on her “wrong and hurtful comments.”
The Oscar-winning actress, who has been with the show since 2007, sparked major controversy last month when she insisted the Holocaust was “not about race,” even after her co-hosts pointed out that Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” was indeed about “white supremacy” and the eradication of what the Nazis saw as inferior races.
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Goldberg apologized both online and during the following day’s program and discussed her remarks further with the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, but she appeared to double down on her comments during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
And Goldberg’s suspension didn’t sit well with the majority of her co-hosts, with sources telling The Daily Beast that Sunny Hostin, Joy Behar, and Ana Navarro were all “furious” over the network’s decision. Furthermore, Goldberg herself was reportedly “livid,” at one point threatening to quit over the punishment.
During her Monday return, however, Goldberg was all smiles, thanking everyone who had reached out to her during her absence. She also expressed some reflection on the whole affair, adding that it would not stop the show from continuing to discuss controversial topics.
“We missed you,” Behar told Goldberg.
“I got to tell you, there’s something kind of marvelous about being on a show like this because we are The View, and this is what we do, and sometimes we don’t do it as elegantly as we could,” Goldberg said. “But it’s five minutes to get in important information about topics. And that’s what we try to do every day.”
She continued: “And I want to thank everybody who reached out while I was away, and I’m telling you. people reached out from places that made me go, ‘Wait, wait. What? Really?!’ OK, and it was amazing, and I listened to everything everybody had to say, and I was very grateful, and I hope it keeps all the important conversations happening because we’re going to keep having tough conversations.”
Goldberg went on to say that discussing controversial topics is what she and her colleagues “have been hired to do,” adding that “it’s not always pretty” and “it’s not always as other people would like to hear.”
She wrapped up her monologue by declaring it “an honor” to sit at The View’s table. And from there, the show jumped right into its normal format, with the first “Hot Topic” for conversation being the previous night’s Super Bowl.
