As anyone with a television is well aware at this point, the upcoming Presidential election and the race to it has taken over large chunks of the 2024 Fall TV schedule, from the usual cable news coverage to channel-spanning primetime debates. Politics is also a frequently discussed topic on the daytime chat show The View, whose hosts recently took aim at Diddy for hoarding lubricants and at Anna Delvey being allowed on Dancing with the Stars.
Of course, the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is also a core topic of discussion at times, and whenever the all-female panel gets into those conversations, specifically in reference to the controversy regarding the 2020 election, they’re required to read off the legal note from Trump’s team that states he “denied any wrongdoing related to the 2020 election.” Indeed, once the conversation was wrapping up on the October 2 installment, someone offscreen motioned for Hostin to read the aforementioned note.
That moment sparked moderator Whoopi Goldberg to temporarily delay the impending commercial break by questioning the sporadically seen executive producer Brian Teta about the practice. Here’s how that exchange went down:
- WHOOPI GOLDBERG: I find that so interesting. We have to do these legal notes each time to say what has been proven to be a fact. We have to deny it on their behalf. Is that right?
- BRIAN TETA: We have to state the denials that they’ve stated.
- WHOOPI GOLDBERG: One day you’ll tell me why. I think I’ve told you a couple of times but we can talk about it again. I find it odd when everybody has seen it, and they know that it’s not necessarily the truth.
- BRIAN TETA: We're showing what [Trump’s team] has said on the record.
- ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: We can do it off-air, guys.
It's unclear what, if anything, was discussed during the commercial break, at least for those at home. Audience members who were present for the taping may have some idea. But fans probably shouldn't expect to find clues about it within The View's episodic video that was uploaded to YouTube, because that portion of the conversation was edited out.
The Times Donald Trump Apparently Turned Down Appearing On The View
Back in April, around the time when Brian Teta signed a lucrative four-year extension to his contract to stay on as The View's executive producer, he talked to Deadline about the thought process behind booking guests during political races, and how the creative team plans for avoiding potential controversy. And in that convo, he addressed the fact that Trump and his namesake son have both been on the show in the past, saying:
There’s nothing really off the table, which is one of the great things about the show. But we kind of consider every opportunity individually. During the Trump administration, we had Don Jr. on and Kimberly Guilfoyle. So we’ve had all sorts of people on. Donald Trump has been on the show many times before he was president. Even in the first election process, he was here in 2015 [for a phone interview].
When asked if there was a chance The View would welcome Trump back ahead of the 2024 election, Teta shared a bit of a non-optimistic answer, based on the former POTUS' past refusals. As the EP put it:
We’ve invited Trump to join us at the table for both 2016 and 2020 elections, and he declined, and at a certain point, we stopped asking. So I don’t anticipate that changing. I think he’s pretty familiar with how the co-hosts feels about him and doesn’t see himself coming here.
The View is indeed a far different show than it once was in the early days with Barbara Walters as moderator, although I'm not certain if that version of the show would have had Donald Trump on as a political candidate either, if for different reasons.
With upcoming guests such as LeVar Burton and Nathan Lane, The View airs weekday mornings on ABC at 11:00 a.m. ET, with the previous week's worth of episodes available to stream with a Hulu subscription.