“The View” co-hosts gushed over CNN host Kasie Hunt cutting off her interview with Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt on Monday after she criticized debate moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper as biased.
After playing a clip of the exchange, co-host Whoopi Goldberg smiled and said, “That was so good.”
Leavitt told Hunt that Trump was “knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network, on CNN, with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known over the past eight years.” An affronted Hunt gave Leavitt an opportunity to pivot back to discussing policy, but she abruptly cut off the interview when Leavitt started in again on Tapper.
“You are a campaign spokesperson,” “View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said. “You should be there to talk about what’s Donald Trump’s proactive agenda for the American people? How does he want to build the middle class or secure the border? But she can’t. It’s grievance. It’s rage. It’s retribution. It’s the same thing that he suffers from.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin praised Hunt for the way she handled the interview, and repeated a quote by NBC News’ Lester Holt, who said in 2021, “the idea we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in.”
“She was being fair to the truth,” Hostin said, referring to Hunt. “She was trying to get to the facts. [Leavitt] refused to get to the facts … When that happens, you cut the mic. You cut the mic, and that’s what she did.”
Goldberg agreed and argued it was nothing new.
“They talk at you, not to you, and that’s what she was doing, and she was doing it, and it’s not new,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg claimed “the media has pretty much always been fair to each side. She said the co-hosts of the show “have to tell you both sides,” and cited her two Republican co-hosts, Navarro and Griffin, who both regularly agree with their liberal co-hosts when it comes to the former president and the GOP.
“We can’t allow, on this show, to have things said that we know for a fact are not true. That’s what it used to be. That’s what it needs to go back to being, and that’s where you all come in. It’s OK to feel how you feel, but demand the truth. Demand folks fact-check what they’re telling you because what they’re telling you is important,” Goldberg continued.
Leavitt, however, was not making inaccurate statements but rather was criticizing Tapper and Bash as a matter of opinion about their statements blasting Trump.
After Hunt tried to steer the conversation back to the debate on Monday during their exchange, Leavitt told Hunt that it would take just five minutes to research Tapper and his commentary on the former president.
“Ma’am, I’m going to stop this interview if you’re going to continue to attack my colleagues,” Hunt said, before ending the interview.
Leavitt told Fox News Digital that CNN’s actions were more proof that Trump wouldn’t get fair treatment.
“CNN cutting off my microphone for bringing up a debate moderator’s history of anti-Trump lies just proves our point that President Trump will not be treated fairly in Thursday’s debate. Yet President Trump is still willing to go into this 3-1 fight to bring his winning message to the American people, and he will win,” Leavitt told Fox News Digital on Monday.
A CNN spokesperson defended Hunt’s actions afterward and praised Bash and Tapper as veteran reporters.
“They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta,” the spokesperson said.