“The View” narrowly avoided an all-out brawl on Thursday’s episode as co-hosts Sara Haines and Sunny Hostin got into a scuffle over the growing divide between Trump and Biden supporters.
It’s been two days since Election Day, and tensions are rising between the parties as Republicans call for vote counting to stop in battleground states and Democrats defend its constitutional right to continue.
But Sara Haines took a queue from Joe Biden’s speech last night and advocated for the importance of unity.
“A lot of the reasons that are at the top of my list of things I vote for are a woman’s right to choose, LGBTQ, the environment, which always puts me mostly voting for democratic candidates. But I have the privilege of doing that because I don’t work check to check to put food on the table for my family,” Haines said. “I look at people and say, ‘How could you want to violate my body but protect your weapons and the second amendment?’… But we can’t expect empathy if we don’t give it as well.”
She added: “A lot of people online went as far as to say, ‘Wow, half the country is racist, half the country is this,’… but when we start conversations assigning those broad strokes to anyone that is other than us, it’s not going to lead to a productive conversation. It’s going to keep people at opposite ends of the spectrum and the dining room table until we figure out a way to have a healthier conversation about these differences.”
On the other hand, Hostin presented a valid counterpoint.
“I’m not saying that it has to be filled with name-calling, but it cannot be filled with lies,” she said. “I’m not saying that if you voted for Trump that you’re a racist, you’re a homophobe, you’re sexist, that you are against transgender rights. But what I will say is, if you voted for Trump, you looked the other way at the fact that he is not allowing our transgender brothers and sisters [to] serve in the military. That he has… slandered women, that he has done all of these terrible things. He has separated children from their families. If you voted for him, then all of those things are OK with you because of your own personal circumstance.”
Joy Behar found the middle ground between both Haines and Hostin’s viewpoints.
“There’s no reason to call people names, Sara, I agree with that,” she said, “What I want people to do is educate themselves about the truth and stop watching these outlets that are lying to you.”
Watch the full segment in the clip above.