President Donald Trump’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday drew applause from his supporters, but by Wednesday morning it was under fire from an unlikely arena: the set of The View.
Whoopi Goldberg, reacting to the president’s remarks on Ukraine and Russia, went so far as to suggest that it might be time to invoke the 25th Amendment—the constitutional mechanism for sidelining a president deemed unable to perform his duties.
“He had an opportunity to do so much more than he offered them, and they don’t consider him to be serious anymore, and I’m worried. What is the amendment, the 20—” she began, trailing off until co-host Sonny Hostin supplied the answer: the 25th.
The exchange revealed a familiar rhythm on the ABC daytime talk show: sharp criticism of Trump mixed with an undercurrent of alarm about America’s image abroad. Goldberg insisted the issue wasn’t ridicule from foreign leaders but something more grave: “They are really concerned for us.”
Hostin piled on, accusing Trump of lying to the world body by claiming to have ended seven wars in hopes of positioning himself for a Nobel Peace Prize. Alyssa Farah Griffin, often the panel’s dissenting voice, broke ranks with her co-hosts, saying she welcomed Trump’s shift on Ukraine. If he could deliver peace, she argued, “he would deserve the award.”
That view was quickly drowned out. Goldberg warned that Trump’s “about-face” on Ukraine would inevitably lead to “another about-face,” leaving allies and adversaries alike confused. Hostin reinforced the point with polling data, noting that “seventy-six percent of Americans say Trump doesn’t deserve to win the Nobel Peace Prize. … His own country doesn’t think that!”
For Goldberg, the parallel was obvious: Biden’s mental fitness was questioned relentlessly when he stumbled. If Trump were judged by the same standard, she implied, he might be “sat down somewhere.”
In the end, the panelists of The View distilled the clash over Trump’s U.N. address into two stark frames: to supporters, an unconventional leader chasing peace; to detractors, a destabilizing figure who unsettles allies and alarms his own citizens.
And in the middle of daytime television chatter, the extraordinary specter of the 25th Amendment made its way into the conversation—another reminder of how polarized perceptions of presidential leadership remain.
