The hosts of The View are sharing their honest reaction to Donald Trump’s win over Vice President Kamala Harris.
After it was officially confirmed Wednesday morning that Trump was the projected winner of the 2024 race, the ladies of The View — who all vehemently opposed his bid for re-election — weighed in on his victory and Harris’ history-making campaign to become both the first woman and woman of color to be president of the United States.
Whoopi Goldberg kicked things off by refusing to say Trump’s name, instead asking her fellow co-hosts, Sunny Hostin, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Sara Haines, and Joy Behar how they were feeling after Trump’s win.
“My takeaway is that the system works. We live in a democracy. People spoke. This is what people wanted. I vehemently disagree with the decision that Americans made. But I feel very, very hopeful that we have a democratic system in this country. We should value it, we should love it, we should protest, if the situation arises that we need to protest — which I’m sure it will,” Behar said. “I’ve been through this before with [Richard] Nixon, it’s been very difficult, but boy, oh boy, do we have a country if we can keep it.”
Echoing Behar’s sentiment, Haines said that she plans to keep fighting against some of the policies and plans Trump is proposing as he readies to take office for his second term.
“For anyone that needs an example of when the person you voted for does not win, you do not say, ‘The system must be broken or that it was rigged,’ you say, ‘It is what it is,’ and you show up anyway,” Haines said. “I want to commend all those people that voted, because you sometimes hear people say, ‘Well, it didn’t matter,’ no it did matter. That was still your currency, that was still your power. And people turned out. Now, if you didn’t vote, you really don’t have a say in the conversation and you can go ahead and sit down.”
Drawing on a lesson Haines said she tries to impart on her children, the television personality said, “you feel anything that comes up” and you continue fighting for the people you care about.
“You feel what you feel. Everyone has different emotions. Some people got what they wanted — a lot of people didn’t. You feel anything that comes and they you turn around, ‘Let’s look at the tapes, let’s see what we did, and let’s see how we continue to fight for the people we care about,'” Haines implored.
She continued, “And here we are today. And I still feel optimistic because ’cause I feel arm-in-arm with so many people that agree with me, and I’m not gonna stop marching.”
As for Griffin, a Republican who announced Tuesday that this election marked the first time she voted for a Democrat candidate for president, said that while the results weren’t what she wanted, Trump’s win reminded her of the voters in “rural America” that she says people often forget about.
“The working class feels left behind. They feel like the powerful, the elite only care about them and their power. He spoke to them,” Griffin, who previously served as an aid for Trump during his first term, said. “We may not have liked his words, but they turned out for him…We need to bring down the temperature, the name calling, the demonizing. If they want to do it, they can do it. It’s a moment to listen to the voters.”
Hostin, meanwhile, was “profoundly disturbed” by the results, especially after urging voters to reject Trump’s hateful rhetoric following his recent rally, in which a comedian vetted by his team made hate-fueled remarks about Puerto Ricans and other minorities.
“If you look at The New York Times this morning, the headline was ‘America Makes a Perilous Choice.’ I think in 2016 we didn’t know what we would get from a Trump administration. We know now. We know now he will have almost unfettered power. I worry not about myself actually. I don’t worry about my station in life. I worry about the working class,” Hostin said. “I worry about my mother, a retired teacher. I worry about our elderly and their social security and Medicare. I worry about my children’s future, especially my daughter who has less rights than I had.”
She continued, “As a woman of color, I was so hopeful that a mixed race woman married to a Jewish guy could be elected president of this country. It had nothing to do with policy. This was a referendum of cultural resentment in this country.”
Navarro agreed, “I have no regrets. I worked hard as hell to elect the first Black, Asian woman president. History slipped through our fingers again. I worked hard as hell for Donald Trump not to be president. But today, unlike Donald Trump and his followers, I acknowledge that he won. I hope for the best for our country. I make a commitment to our LGBTQ, to our immigrants, to our elderly, young girls, women, we will not stop fighting. We can be sad today. Today we can be sad. Tomorrow we stand up and continue.”
While Goldberg acknowledged that Trump is once again the president, she made clear that she will continue he practice of not saying Trump’s name, telling viewers, “That’s not going to change.”
Though Meghan McCain is no longer on the show, she preemptively criticized The View on Tuesday morning before the episode even aired.
Taking to X, she wrote, “It is actual malfeasance on the part of ABC news that there isn’t one single conservative woman on The View this morning who voted for Trump or simply isn’t repulsed by his supporters to explain to America why he is still so popular.”
