ABC’s “The View” was home to several political debates in 2024, and one moment that commentators have said influenced voters to shy away from Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Day.
“The View” co-hosts held several interviews with prominent, mostly Democratic politicians and media figures over the last year, including President Biden, Vice President Harris, Gov. Tim Walz, Hillary Clinton and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Here’s a look at some of the most notable moments during the show in 2024.
Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris (C) is pictured in studio at ABC during a break in the recording of the show “The View” with hosts (L-R) Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Whoopi Goldberg, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin in New York on October 8, 2024.
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During a live interview on the show in October, co-host Sunny Hostin asked the vice president if there was anything she would have done differently from President Biden in the last four years.
“Not a thing comes to mind,” Harris answered. The moment quickly went viral, as Harris had been criticized for not differentiating herself from the president more throughout the campaign.
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The vice president said she wanted to focus on at-home healthcare, and had planned to appoint a Republican to her cabinet during the interview as well. After Harris lost, political commentators pointed to the vice president’s answer to Hostin’s question specifically as a reason why she lost to Trump.
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said after the election that Harris’ failed campaign could be reduced to that moment on “The View.”
President Joe Biden (C) speaks with hosts Ana Navarro (L) and Joy Behar (R) during a commercial break in a live interview on ABC’s “The View” in New York on September 25, 2024.
President Biden dropped out of the race after a weeks-long pressure campaign from Democrats at the end of July. This followed a disastrous debate performance for the president against Trump.
He became the first sitting president to join the co-hosts for a live interview on the show. He told the co-hosts that he didn’t sense any worry or reluctance from his fellow Democrats about him running again.
“I never fully believed the assertions that somehow there was this overwhelming reluctance of my running again. I didn’t sense that,” Biden said. The president said he didn’t bow out due to the pressure from Democrats, but rather after thinking about his age.
Griffin asked Biden if he thought he would have won in November if he remained in the race.
“Yes,” he said. “I was confident I would beat Trump — he’s a loser.”
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“The View” co-hosts weren’t happy with Trump’s win, as Hostin worried about “internment camps” and mass deportations the morning after Election Day.
“I’m profoundly disturbed,” Hostin said. “I think if you look at The New York Times this morning, the headline was ‘America makes a perilous choice.’ I think that in 2016, we didn’t know what we would get from a Trump administration, but we know now. And we know now that he will have almost unfettered power.”
Hostin has blamed racism, misogyny, and sexism for Trump’s win and bluntly asked in one of the episodes following the election, “I think the more relevant question actually is what is wrong with America?”
She continued, “What is wrong with this country that they would choose a message of divisiveness, of xenophobia, of racism, of misogyny, over a message of inclusiveness, a message for the people, by the people, of the people?”
While her fellow co-host tried to push back on the idea that racism and misogyny were part of the reason Trump won, Hostin insisted it was her “lived experience.”
“As a country, it’s very difficult for people to believe that racism and misogyny, they’re just alive and well. I think that we don’t want to think that about ourselves, our neighbors, our friends, but it’s – my lived experience tells me that it does still exist, even if your lived experience doesn’t tell that it exists and, you know, the facts support that,” Hostin began, pointing to a graph that showed “a clear racial divide” in who voted for Trump as opposed to who voted for Harris.
The day after Election Day, Hostin, Behar, Ana Navarro, and Griffin — who announced she would be supporting a Democrat for president for the first time in her life — appeared to be wearing black.
Goldberg and Sara Haines did not wear black.
Hostin and Navarro suggested the president pardon his son, Hunter Biden, days before the president issued the official announcement.
They argued that if Trump, a “convicted felon,” was elected to the office of the presidency, then the president should pardon Hunter.
After Biden issued the pardon, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin accused the president of lying, because he had repeatedly vowed not to pardon Hunter.
The other co-hosts disagreed, as Whoopi Goldberg told Griffin to stop calling it a lie.
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Hostin accused Coleman Hughes, a Black author who frequently appears on CNN as a political commentator, of being used as a “pawn” by the GOP during a contentious interview in March.
Hughes, the author of “The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America,” joined the co-hosts of “The View” to discuss the book, which he said argues that everyone should try their very best to “treat people without regard to race.”
“Your argument for colorblindness, I think it’s something that the right has co-opted, and so many in the Black community, if I’m being honest with you, because I want to be, believed that you are being used as a pawn by the right and that you are charlatan of sorts,” Hostin said.
“I don’t think I’ve been co-opted by anyone. I’ve only voted twice — both for Democrats. I’m an independent,” Coleman said. “I would vote for a Republican — probably a non-Trump Republican if they were compelling. I don’t think there’s any evidence I’ve been co-opted by anyone and I think that’s an ad-hominem tactic people use to not address, really, the important conversations we’re having here.”
After Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels in 2016, the co-hosts were jubilant.
“I felt like America won,” Hostin said. “I felt like New York won. I felt like the Manhattan DA’s office won. I felt like I won.”
“I got so excited, I started leaking a little bit,” co-host Joy Behar said, upon hearing the news.
When Harris joined the co-hosts of the show in October, Goldberg confidently introduced Harris as the “next president of the United States.”
“It’s pretty remarkable, I mean I remember when Obama was running and my mother said to me, ‘never in my lifetime thought I would ever see a Black man run and win,’” Goldberg said, before referencing Donald Trump’s “Black jobs” comment.
The ABC talk show played video of Haley getting choked up while speaking to a crowd about her husband, who was deployed to Djibouti in 2023 as part of the South Carolina Army National Guard. Haley’s voice started to shake as she said, “I wish Michael was here today. And I wish our children and I could see him tonight, but we can’t.”
Hostin argued Haley had been “inauthentic from day one,” after seeing the clip.
After criticizing some of Haley’s statements about Trump, Hostin reiterated that she was also specifically referring to the moment where Haley got emotional while speaking about her husband, and said she didn’t think it was real.
“I think that there’s something that military families go through. I come from a military family as many of us do, and I don’t trust her authenticity,” Hostin said. “No, I didn’t feel that it was authentic, and I didn’t trust it.”
Months prior to the June debate that eventually led to President Biden dropping out of the race, Joy Behar, a huge fan and supporter of the president, was confident he would “wipe the floor” with Trump.
“Why does Joe Biden have to lower himself to even be on the same stage with this criminal, this 91 times indicted, sexual harasser, accused sexual assaulter? Why? Why?” Behar asked.
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg questioned why Biden suddenly needed to prove himself after Trump asked him to debate and said, “He snaps his finger, and now Joe Biden has to prove to everybody that he’s up for the task?”
“Donald Trump better be careful,” co-host Sunny Hostin warned as she argued Trump lost the 2020 debates against Biden. Behar chimed in and said, “Trump is even worse now, he can’t put a sentence together.”
First Lady Jill Biden also sat down with the co-hosts in May 2024.
“Consistently, we’re seeing poll after poll that are showing Trump beating your husband outside of the margin of error, when in fact, last time in 2020, Joe Biden was beating him in nearly every poll. How do you turn those numbers around with five months out, and are you fearful of what a second Trump term could look like?” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin asked.
The first lady said the Biden campaign was reaching everyone they possibly can.
“Joe has been traveling as much as possible, and we’re not going to take anything for granted and those polls are going to turn, I’m confident of it,” she claimed. “I believe that Americans are going to choose good over evil.”
Original article source: Top 10 moments on ‘The View’ in 2024: Kamala Harris bungles on Biden, co-hosts struggle to reconcile election
