Following years of constant criticism of President Donald Trump, The View co-hosts were allegedly instructed to “tone down” their comments about the world leader.
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According to a report by The Daily Beast, multiple sources confirmed that The View’s all-female co-hosts and the show’s producer Brian Teta met with Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger and ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic to discuss Trump’s criticism.
Karamehmedovic allegedly told the ladies and Teta that they needed to “broaden” their conversations beyond their “predominant focus on politics.” He then pointed out highly rated episodes featuring celebrities while encouraging them to lean into a more entertainment news coverage.
One source noted the move was not “framed as an edict, but suggested alone rankled the hosts.”
The View Co-Hosts Push Back Against The Idea Of Toning Down Donald Trump Criticism
Meanwhile, the insiders further stated that the co-hosts pushed back against Karamehmedovic’s idea to tone down Trump and political discussions.
Co-host Ana Navarro allegedly stated that the show’s audience “routinely seeks out its perspective on politics.” Especially when the Trump administration’s “radical attempts to upend the government can potentially affect their daily lives.”
“‘This is what our audience wants,'” another source quoted the hosts. “‘This is what our audience wants. Isn’t it gonna look kind of bad if we’re all of a sudden not talking about politics?'”
The co-hosts notably found Karamehmedovic’s ideas and requests to be “silly” and said they were “just going to keep doing their thing.”
Another source shared that ABC will “constantly have conversations with talent based on viewer feedback, and this instance was no different.”
Not long after the report went viral, Meghan McCain, former co-host of The View, shared her opinion. “They will never do that,” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
McCain has been a well-known critic of The View since she departed from the show in 2021. She previously called out the talk show for lacking a “pro-Trump” voice.
“It is actually malfeasance on the part of ABC News that there isn’t one single conservative woman on The View this morning who voted for Trump or simply isn’t repulsed by his supporters to explain to America why he is still popular,” she wrote on X the day after the 2024 presidential election.
“It’s the radical professive insane asylum, and that is why I left years ago,” she wrote in a separate X post.
McCain was a co-host of The View from October 2017 to July 2021.