The View Co-Hosts Call Out Nikki Haley Over Controversial Comments

The hosts of the daytime talk show "The View" aren't ones to shy away from controversy or keep quiet about their opinions, so much so that sometimes the arguments on "The View" go too far. But there seemed to be a fair amount of consensus from the women around Nikki Haley, who is running to be the Republican nominee for president, and her comments about the Civil War.

In the "Hot Topics" segment of the show on January 2, 2024, they showed the clip of Haley answering a question at a town hall in New Hampshire about the cause of the Civil War in the United States. The issue that the women on "The View" have with her response is that Haley didn't promptly say that slavery was the cause — instead, Haley talked about it being "down to the role of government." She later followed up in an interview on Fox News saying that was a mistake, and that she should have, in fact, said slavery.

That walking back of her response didn't do much to impress the hosts of "The View," and they made it clear what they thought of Haley. Goldberg seemed to address the presidential candidate directly, explaining how she should have answered the question, "It was slavery. Slavery straight up. Slavery. [...] You're old enough to know better. [...] Don't sugar coat this." Joy Behar was equally as unimpressed, quipping, "She's getting her history from "Gone With the Wind."

Sara Haines chimed in with her take on Nikki Haley's response to the Civil War question, noting that it seemed to show a lot, and none of it good, about Haley when she said that the Civil War query was a "gotcha" question. "This is one of the easiest things you can ask anyone," Haines said.

Sunny Hostin got particularly passionate as she talked about how problematic she felt Haley's original response was as well as her trying to walk it back. "You can kiss my grits," Hostin said. "She didn't say it [was about slavery] intentionally because 85% of Republicans are white and she doesn't want to lose those votes."

She tied it back to Haley's comments about the Confederate flag when she was governor of South Carolina. In 2015, after Dylann Roof killed nine people in a Charleston church, Haley called for the Confederate flag to be taken down from the South Carolina state house, but in a speech about it, she said, "For many people in our state, the flag stands for traditions that are noble," via The New York Times. Haley repeated that sentiment in 2019, during an appearance on "The Glenn Beck Program," when she said some people in the state saw the flag as representing "service and sacrifice and heritage."

While there wasn't any support for Nikki Haley's comments from any of the hosts on "The View," she does still have a supporter for her presidential bid in host Alyssa Farah Griffin. However, Griffin did refer to Haley's comment as "wrong, bizarre, historically inaccurate; it felt like pandering too. [...] The vast majority of Republicans do not want people to whitewash slavery."

That ongoing support for Haley seemed to baffle Sunny Hostin, who told Griffin, "You can't support her. You're rational." Some people on X, formerly known as Twitter, also thought it was odd that Griffin would still be publicly pulling for Haley. One person posted: "Offended that ppl like Alyissa are so insensitive dismissing or even recognizing esp. sitting next to 2 blk wmn who are the descendants of the enslaved, the TRAUMA of SLAVERY! She wld NEVER so easily say she'd vote for someone who took Nazi Germany & the Holocaust so cavalier."

However, there were others who agreed with Griffin that support for Haley would be the best way forward for anyone who doesn't want Donald Trump to be president again. Though some think that her comment sealed the fate of the Republican nominee, "after that simple question not answered with one word[,] Trump will get that nomination," wrote one viewer. We'll soon get to see if Haley's comments impact her at the polls — the first votes for the Republican candidate will be held on January 15, 2024 in Iowa.