Whoopi Goldberg has been a mainstay on The View for more than a decade, but she has now been suspended due to some Holocaust-related comments that she made on the long-running talk show. Although Goldberg apologized on social media for the comments and also went on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to elaborate, ABC News President Kim Godwin has suspended her.
ABC News President Kim Godwin made the decision to suspend Whoopi Goldberg for her comments, although that doesn’t mean that she has been fired from The View. In a statement shared on Twitter, Godwin said:
Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments. While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.
The controversy started after the January 31 episode of The View, when Whoopi Goldberg dropped some comments during the “Hot Topics” segment that quickly spread all over social media. During a discussion about the Holocaust, Goldberg made the claim that it wasn’t about race, but about “man’s inhumanity to man.” The statement does acknowledge her apology and indicates that she'll be back after her two weeks of what Kim Godwin evidently hopes will be reflecting and learning.
The situation escalated quickly, with Goldberg's suspension coming less than two days after the episode with her comments aired on ABC. She addressed her comments initially just hours after the episode aired, acknowledging that she caused hurt and had been corrected for what she said, expressing her "sincerest apologies."
Not long after, the EGOT winner appeared on CBS' The Late Show. Although she discussed her upcoming appearance back in the Star Trek universe and other topics, she also addressed the controversy stemming from her comments on The View. Goldberg explained the situation and her point of view for why she claimed that the Holocaust wasn't about race:
I thought it was a salient discussion because, as a Black person, I think of race as being something that I can see. So I see you and I know what race you are, and the discussion was about how I felt about that. I felt that it was really more about man's inhumanity to man and how horrible people can be to people, and we're seeing it manifest itself these days. But people were very angry and they said, 'No, no, we are a race,' and I understand. I understand. I felt differently. I respect everything everyone is saying to me, and, you know, I don't want to fake apologize, you know. I'm very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying. And so because of it, they're saying that I'm antisemitic and that I'm denying the Holocaust and all these other things, which, you know, would never have occurred to me to do. I thought we were having a discussion about race, which everyone I think is having.
At the time of writing, Whoopi Goldberg has not yet commented on her suspension from The View. The longtime co-host – who has been on board the ABC daytime talk show since 2007 – has missed episodes of the show in the past, quite notably after testing positive for COVID. (Unlike some other View co-hosts, she didn't receive news of a positive COVID test live on air.)
If ABC News sticks with the suspension of two weeks, then Whoopi Goldberg could be back in front of the cameras on The View by mid-February. Still, considering how fast the situation escalated from when she made her comments on January 31 to her suspension on the night of February 1, it's hard to guess with much certainty about what happens next.
A reaction from Goldberg to the suspension could shed more light. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for any big developments in the situation, and check out our 2022 TV schedule to keep up on what's happening on the small screen.
