Whoopi Says She's Speechless After 'The View' Host Forced to Read Legal Note on Trump Arrest - 'I'm Not Saying a Thing'
If only she’d keep her pledge in perpetuity.
Less than a week after the hosts of “The View” were celebrating the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump, they were faced with the cold, hard facts of the case against him. Not only were they weak, there was a question as to whether or not Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg even had jurisdiction.
There was thus a bit less celebrating on Wednesday’s edition of “The View,” the day after Trump was officially charged.
Sure, co-host Whoopi Goldberg was happy at the beginning of the segment — “Yesterday, you-know-who made the trip downtown to a Manhattan courthouse to face justice,” she said, to laughter.
The charges were 34 materially identical charges involving non-disclosure payments made to three individuals, including porn star Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 campaign. While these would usually be misdemeanors, Bragg elevated them to felonies under the argument Trump was concealing another crime — namely, campaign finance violations.
However, the title of the segment when it was posted to YouTube should tell you all you need to know: “Will Bragg’s Case Against Trump Hold Up In Court?”
TL;DR: They thought so, but only kind of, and some panel members thought he wasn’t going to jail — and when you have to use the word “kinda” involving “The View” and any condemnation of Trump, that’s not exactly confidence.
Not only that, but this was one of those “View” segments where a “legal note” had to be read at the end by Sunny Hostin — the co-host who actually has training as a lawyer, so this task falls very often to her.
“I have a legal note: Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied any criminal wrongdoing,” Hostin said.
He also “said he never had an affair with Stormy Daniels or [Playboy model] Karen McDougal,” Hostin added.
After a slight pause, enter Whoopi: “I’m not saying a thing.”
Now, naturally, what Whoopi is saying is, “I think that’s a bunch of bunkum but that’s not the most legally or ethically sound thing to say out loud.” Or: “What I have to say is nuanced — and I know our audience.” Take your pick. Neither speaks well of the show.
So she’s not saying a thing. Speechless. We can only hope this is a trend.
Moreover, this isn’t the only time that Whoopi has had to admit that saying an affair between Trump and Daniels is a fait accompli is, well, technically incorrect.
A previous legal note, as the indictment was being anticipated, had Hostin reiterating that Trump “said he never had an affair … with Stormy Daniels.”
“We have photographs!” co-host Joy Behar protested. “Don’t we have pictures of this?”
“No, we don’t have pictures,” Whoopi said.
“We have a picture of him with her,” Behar insisted.
“We have a picture of him with her, we don’t have a picture of them,” Whoopi said. (For the more innocent among us, what she meant by the emphasis on “them” was that there were no pictures of Trump and Daniels in flagrante delicto.)
You get the feeling these legal notes — and her co-hosts’ reaction to them — are wearing Whoopi down. I mention this because — well, I’ve made this suggestion in other articles, but liberals love recycling: Whoopi Goldberg was once a great actress. “The Color Purple.” “Ghost.” “Soapdish.”
Heck, back in my teen days, when I could afford to be an insomniac and iffy movies on cable channels were the only alternative to Nintendo 64, I’d watch “Sister Act” or “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” simply because Whoopi was, well, Whoopi. The scene in “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” where her character is in a phone booth being carted away by a tow truck and tries to tell the police over the phone, “You can’t miss me! I’m a little black woman in a big silver box!” is almost worth watching the entire flawed film for. (“Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit” is where this writer draws the line, however.)
Brendan Fraser, who everyone last cared about when people still cared about the Nintendo 64, won a deserved Best Actor at this year’s Academy Awards for “The Whale.” Before him or the Nintendo 64, John Travolta was relegated to work in bad talking baby movies before Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction.”
Not that I have any great love for Hollywood — which is roughly the conurbation of Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah in the basic vicinity of Los Angeles that produces the mildly entertaining agitprop we put on in the background while we scroll through TikTok videos — but it’s somehow not worse than “The View” and, unlike the one-hour weekday hen-fight she currently presides over, occasionally produces something worthwhile.
So, Whoopi, I reiterate my advice: Get a good agent, find a good script, negotiate a reasonable contract and start anew. It’s not too late. It doesn’t have to end like this.
But if you want to close out your career yelling over similarly uninformed individuals over subjects that require, you know, information, “I’m not saying a thing” is a policy you should consider employing more often. Just a thought.
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