Whoopi Goldberg & Joy Behar Spar Over Trump Cabinet Woes

The cohosts of The View got fired up about the first “Hot Topic” of the day on Wednesday’s (September 17) live edition. The panelists — Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin — started the day by reviewing footage of FBI Director Kash Patel’s contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, in which he fielded questions about the department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and other matters. During the hearing, Patel snapped back at those Democratic senators who questioned his judgment and fitness for the role.

Hostin was the first to speak up and said Patel is “not qualified” for the bureau’s top job and that he had “despicable” behavior during the hearing that was “unbecoming of the office.” Haines then echoed her sentiments, saying, “He’s in way over his head… He’s the most unqualified person to run the FBI in the history of it.” She added, “He’s just drowning. That’s the problem, and that’s why we’re seeing things mishandled.” Griffin went on to question the truth of his statements during the hearing noting, “Kash Patel claimed that there is no credible information that Epstein trafficked to anyone but himself. I’m sorry, then, why is Ghislane Maxwell sitting in prison, convicted right now of sex trafficking?”

When it was Behar’s turn to speak, she was visibly flustered, and Goldberg encouraged her to “take a deep breath.”

“I feel like we’re trapped in a bad movie. You’ve got these incompetent people running the government, and we’re like a bunch of sitting ducks. You’ve got the puppy killer, you’ve got the SignalGate guy. You’ve got the brain worm,” she said, referring to Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., respectively. “I mean, there’s no end to the incompetency that we are experiencing as Americans. I can almost not even talk about individual situations like this because the overall picture and the elephant in the room is that we’re screwed.”

Goldberg was quick to dismiss Behar’s last note there, saying, “No. We’re not screwed.”

“I know, you say that everyday…” Behar retorted.

“I say it every day, and yet we are still standing,” Goldberg continued.

“Barely,” Behar demurred.

“Yeah, but we’re up. Listen, lots of us have been down. We know what down is. It takes a lot to ruin a country. It takes a lot to ruin a country because people wake up and they start to go, ‘You know what? I don’t like what I’m seeing,” Goldberg then said.

“But Whoopi, it’s only since January. I mean, we’ve got another three years to go,” Behar smarted back.

“I don’t know what we’ve got, except that I’m pretty sure that the people are taking care of the business at hand… If they’re in need of something, they’re going to neighbors. If they want books or they want information, they don’t have to go to the library. They can go to next-door neighbors and get the information. People are making changes in a situation that is meant for us to give up. It’s put out there, and they are doing things to grind us down. And I see people bending, but I don’t see anybody breaking,” Goldberg stated. “I don’t see people breaking, and that is what gets me to keep standing, because they come to us, but we’re standing and we’re still here, and God bless the Constitution. And she’s holding, I don’t know for how long. She has not broken yet.”

The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC