'The View' will not change course following Trump's victory, ABC insider says
Critics have been railing against "The View" for not having a pro-Trump co-host, but an ABC insider tells Fox News Digital it has no plans on changing course.
"The View" has received extensive media attention since President-elect Donald Trump's resounding victory last week, prompting critics to ask whether the ABC daytime talk show that consists solely of anti-Trump voices will change course.
One insider tells Fox News Digital that's not happening.
The ladies of "The View"were united in their dismay about Trump's defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, who was openly supported by all six hosts, including Republicans Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin.
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Questions about its representation and whether it would try to pivot to finding pro-Trump voices have been the subject of recent reports, but a well-placed source at ABC is pushing back, saying that claims about the network scrambling over its marquee daytime talk show are "not accurate."
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"There is definitely a network-wide push and sense of responsibility to give a voice to the 75 million people who voted for Trump. But ‘The View’ didn’t have a pro-Trump voice for the entirety of his first presidency," the ABC employee told Fox News Digital. "Meghan McCain and Abby Huntsman were both loyal conservatives, but both expressed that they didn’t personally support Trump. It’s no different this time around."
"But expect to see Trump officials invited on in 2025," they added.
Meghan McCain served as the token conservative co-host from 2017-2021. Abby Huntsman also had a seat at the table from 2018-2020. While neither McCain nor Huntsman – the daughters of prominent GOP politicians John McCain and Jon Huntsman – ever rallied behind Trump, McCain regularly clashed with her liberal colleagues in defense of conservative causes.
McCain recently blasted ABC News over its absence of a pro-Trump voice on "The View," particularly in the wake of the president-elect's victory in the popular vote.
"If your entire panel voted for Kamala Harris, it is not representative of America," McCain told Fox News Digital.
"There's millions and millions and millions of conservative women in America who are looking to that voice to represent them. And clearly, ABC has just given up on the very notion that conservative women exist," she added. "'The View' is under the blanket of ABC News. How is the Trump administration expected to have any kind of trust or give access to a network who doesn't even care enough about their voters to make sure it's represented on their women's daytime show?"
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She elaborated that she finds the show intolerant to conservatives.
"They disrespect and find conservative people, particularly conservative women, intolerable traitors to your gender," she said of the show. "So they'll make it so hostile for you that people don't want to be there, and so I also think that's another reason why a conservative woman isn't there, because the hosts wouldn't be able to handle it. And trust me, I know what I'm talking about."
ABC News did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment but issued a statement to counter a New York Post report touting its ratings and how the current panel was "clearly resonating with audiences."
"The View is an opinion-based show featuring a diverse panel of women with different points of view – the current panel is clearly resonating with audiences given that the series just had its highest rated episode in more than a decade and hit a 4-year high in total viewers," the ABC spokesperson said.
Following McCain's exit in July 2021, ABC News went through a lengthy vetting process trying to find a conservative to join the liberal co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines. In August 2022, the network decided on Navarro and Griffin, both anti-Trump Republicans.
Navarro and Griffin frequently joined in on the liberal pile-on against Trump and his backers in the GOP and boosted Harris, rarely going to the mat on policy clashes like McCain frequently did. Navarro even hosted one of the nights of the Democratic National Convention this year and worked for the Biden campaign's Latino outreach in Florida in 2020.
Fox News' David Rutz contributed to this report.
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