Whoopi Goldberg on 'The View': No, I Didn't Say Mike Pence Is Part of the KKK

Television By TooFab Staff |

After getting some online backlash for her comments on Tuesday's show about Vice President Mike Pence, Whoopi Goldberg had to "clear something up" this morning on "The View."

Right after the walkout, the show's moderator addressed the cameras straight on saying, "Before we do anything, I need to clear something up."

"We were having a discussion yesterday and for some reason, people misunderstood something that I said," she said. "[Jedediah Bila] and I were discussing why people might have gotten up and left a commencement speech that the Vice President was giving. I was trying to make an analogy of what it would be like if I were sitting there, what would make me get up and leave and people decided that I was saying that [Pence] was part of the KKK. It's insane, but that's how people took the analogy."

"No, he's not part of the KKK and I don't think his speech had anything to do with anything hateful or terrible," she continued. "But if people feel that you don't represent them, that might have been a reason people were walking out and that's the point I was trying to make. No, Mike Pence is not part of the KKK."

Her clarification came after the women of the show had a heated debate Tuesday after students at Notre Dame walked out of a commencement speech given by Pence.

"Sometimes if you know what somebody has to say, you don't want to hear it," Goldberg said during the discussion. "I think most of these folks made a very specific decision because what he was about affects them in such ways they don't want to hear it."

"I shouldn't have to listen to a guy who's wearing a hood who I know wants to string me up," she added.

"That's a little bit different. He's not trying to kill people," Bila responded, before Goldberg went in on "isms."

"Whether it's racism, or you don't like gay people, when you say to somebody 'I don't believe that you actually feel that way because I believe that God has told me -- forget what God has said to you -- God told me you shouldn't be who you are.' When you're sitting with someone who is saying that to you, you don't want to sit and watch it," said Whoopi. "You don't want to disrupt it, you don't want to scream, but you want to get up and say I'm not gonna take it."

Only a couple websites picked up her comments, with their followers chiming on on her words on Twitter: