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Whoopi Goldberg explains why 'The View' waited to discuss ABC's decision to "indefinitely" suspend Kimmel, arguing "the government cannot apply pressure to force someone to be silenced."
Of course The View was going to talk about Jimmy Kimmel getting "indefinitely" suspended by ABC over his Charlie Kirk assassination comments. Just because they didn't talk about it during Thursday or Friday's show doesn't mean anyone was trying to silence them, according to Whoopi Goldberg herself.
"No one silences us," Whoopi said on Monday's broadcast.
"Now look, did y’all really think we weren’t going to talk about Jimmy Kimmel? I mean, have you watched the show over the last 29 seasons?" she said at the top of the show, before going on to explain why it's taken this long for them to weigh in.
"When the news broke last week about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, we took a breath to see if Jimmy was going to say anything about it first," she said. "We did the same thing with Stephen Colbert. Then, our show was on tape on Friday. But we are live here today, and we are getting into it now."
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That discussion was all about the First Amendment and and how it exists as the first amendment to the Constitution because, as Alyssa Farah Griffin asserted, "you need to be able to hold those in power accountable." She even argued that this was a large reason she gravitated toward conservatism.
"I think a lot of people when they think of conservatives they think, you wake up, you kiss a picture of Donald Trump and you want tax cuts to the wealthy," she added "What made me a conservative was the idea that in all the systems of government that have existed in human history, as imperfect as ours is, the Constitution gets it pretty damned right."
She also remarked on a comment from Senator Ted Cruz, who has come out against government censorship of free speech. She said that he made "an incredibly important point" about this pendulum swing in America. "Donald Trump is not going to be in power for 100 years, [though] It may feel that way to a lot of people right now." she said.
"There will be a time when the left is back in power, and I think the same conservatives who are backing this decision, this crackdown on free speech do not want a left-wing president policing what can be said on TV, how you can criticize your president."
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View StoryFor Sara Haines, though, it's not a great argument because that's not really the point. As a proud independent, she said she "will never fall in line" because she always hears one side or the other arguing, "it's really not the same thing" when they're pushing to censor speech. "It's absolutely the same thing," she insisted.
She then went on to talk about Steve Bannon, who unlike conservatives like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, is celebrating Kimmel's suspension. "He said he loves to watch these people squeal when Jimmy Kimmel got canceled. And he also went on to say, the days of you guys being in charge are over," she said. "He called Kimmel's suspension a 'scalp' and warned there are going to be many, many more 'scalps.' So he said it was more important for institutional power than consistency in defending the First Amendment."
"Unlike Cruz, Steve Bannon's father did not flee a dictatorship. Like me, Ted Cruz's father fled a dictatorship in Cuba," Ana Navarro said. She started her comments by "thanking our loyal viewers for demanding truth and courage from us. You deserve it and we will give it to you."
She explained that she had lived under both a left-wing and right-wing dictatorship before fleeing her native Nicaragua, and "this is what dictators and authoritarians do; It does not matter the ideology."
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View Story"At first, they come for the people with big platforms. At first, they silence the press. Then they come for all of us, because their intent is to scare us into silence and self-censorship," she continued, going on to list how the Trump administration has already "kicked the AP out of the Oval Office for not saying Gulf of America, they cut the funding for NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, they are demanding reporters sign a pledge that they will only report on what the Pentagon wants them to report on."
"That is not how the First Amendment works," she argued.
"And I will say to you all, to all of us, look, we have seen tech titans going to to the Oval Office, we are seeing media moguls, publishers of newspapers, we are seeing all of them try to make the peace with Donald Trump," Navarro continued. "A bully always comes back for more. So they need to stand up and we need to demand the same from ourselves."
"And from each other," Goldberg added.
Viewers were loving that The View finally jumped into the Kimmel debate, lighting up social media with their reactions.
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