HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher issued a sharp critique of ABC’s The View, telling Democrats that if they want to be taken seriously, they need to “do something” about the network’s high-profile daytime talk show.
Maher’s remarks followed Whoopi Goldberg’s controversial comparison between the experience of being a Black American and that of a woman living under the Islamic theocracy in Iran.
Goldberg’s comments, made during a heated exchange with co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, sparked immediate backlash. After Griffin pointed to Iran’s well-documented oppression of women — including arrests for not wearing the hijab and other severe restrictions on personal freedoms — Goldberg responded by invoking America’s history of racism: “Let’s not do that, because if we start with that, we have been known in this country to tie gay folks to the car. Listen, I’m sorry, they used to just keep hanging Black people.”
Maher, a long-time critic of ideological extremism within his own party, said statements like Goldberg’s illustrate the kind of radical rhetoric that alienates moderate voters and hands Republicans political victories. He likened it to the Democratic Party’s controversial positions on gender ideology and race — topics Maher argues are being pushed to impractical and electorally damaging extremes.
U.S. Representative Wesley Hunt (R-TX), who is Black and represents a conservative, majority-white district, also pushed back strongly on Goldberg’s comments.
“My district in Texas is a white majority district that Trump would’ve won by 25 points,” he noted. “I’m a direct descendant of a slave, and I got elected not because of the color of my skin but because of the content of my character.”
Hunt added that his electoral success is living proof of America’s progress on race and dismissed Goldberg’s portrayal as not just unhelpful, but detached from reality. “So I don’t ever want to hear Whoopi Goldberg’s conversation about how it’s worse to be Black in America right now.”
Behind the scenes, tensions may be brewing at the corporate level as well. According to The Daily Beast, Disney CEO Bob Iger and ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic have reportedly grown frustrated with The View’s consistent political controversies. Sources claim that Karamehmedovic even held a meeting with the show’s executive producer and hosts, urging them to broaden their focus beyond hostile political commentary.
So far, those recommendations appear to have gone unheeded. The show’s current cast — which includes Goldberg, Sunny Hostin, and Joy Behar — has drawn repeated criticism for inflammatory remarks not just about Trump and Republicans, but also about Christians, white Americans, and others seen as ideologically or culturally opposed to the progressive left.
