Whoopi Goldberg quiets booing audience during The View with Tim Scott as guest
Whoopi Goldberg brought the heat in The View studio, commanding silence from an animated audience who were booing Republican Senator Tim Scott on the morning of Monday, June 5. Scott, who’s aiming to be the Republican’s presidential nominee in the forthcoming 2024 election, was in the hot seat as co-host Ana Navarro grilled him on his comrade, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ culture war strategies and recent spat with Disney over the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The audience weren’t having any of Scott’s retorts, but Goldberg wasn’t having the jeering.
Navarro pressed Scott on whether the Republican party was pushing the envelope too far with policies that seemed to specifically target education and the LGBTQ+ community. With a staggering figure of nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the pipeline, this was no light question. But as Scott began to shift blame onto “the radical left making decisions” within “corporate culture,” Navarro interjected, “Do you think Disney is the radical left?”
Scott tried to navigate the choppy waters, discussing the Florida governor’s interaction with Disney before he got some serious flak from the crowd. He defended Disney’s recent struggles over what he saw as a rightful issue related to the influence on young minds. “I thought he started off on the right foot with that issue,” Scott said, just as the studio crowd began to drown him out with boos.
But Goldberg wasn’t about to let her studio descend into a free-for-all. She quickly brought the audience to heel, insisting on respect. “No, no. Not here! I’m sorry, sir. Do not boo. This is The View,” she rebuked. “We accept [that] we don’t have to believe everything people say, but you cannot boo people here, please. You cannot do it. Please continue.”
With the crowd brought back in line, Scott resumed his point, alluding to a criticized Georgia law established after the 2020 election, but failed to clarify what he meant by “indoctrination.” “The radical left is getting involved from a corporate perspective on a number of issues to include what was the Georgia state [election] law, which was supposedly Jim Crow 2.0,” he said, countering the narrative with record-breaking African American voting and success rates in the recent elections.
The senator’s moment on The View wasn’t without some back-story. He’d previously been at odds with co-host Joy Behar, who’d challenged his comprehension of systemic racism faced by African Americans and other minorities. Behar, however, wasn’t present to face Scott as she doesn’t appear on the show on Mondays.
Despite Behar’s absence, Goldberg along with Sunny Hostin, didn’t shy away from taking Scott to task on systemic racism. In response, he acknowledged that both parties could do better on racial issues, while praising Republicans for what he sees as their “fabulous job” of improvement.
