Whoopi Goldberg has been put on a two week suspension from ABC’s “The View” following fallout from remarks she made about the Holocaust on Monday.
Despite issuing an apology on Tuesday morning’s episode, calls for Goldberg to be fired escalated throughout the day.
On Tuesday night, ABC News president Kim Godwin tweeted this message: “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.”
According to The Daily Beast, the news is not going over well with Goldberg’s “The View” co-hosts Sunny Hostin, Joy Behar and Ana Navarro, who are “furious.”
On Monday, Goldberg stated that the Holocaust was not about race. After a wave of backlash, she issued an apology on Twitter.
Later that night, she made an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and explained what she meant.
“I feel, being Black, when we talk about race it’s a very different thing to me,” she told Colbert. “So I said that I felt that the Holocaust wasn’t about race, and people got very, very, very angry.”
She added, “As a Black person, I think of race being something that I can see,” while acknowledging the criticism from the Jewish community, she said, “I understand, and I respect everything everyone is saying to me. And I don’t want to fake apologize. I am very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying… I understand that not everybody sees it that way and that I did a lot of harm, I guess, to myself.”
The following morning on “The View,” Whoopi provided another apology. “I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention. And I understand why now, and for that, I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things.”
She added, “I regret my comments, as I said, and stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people.”
Among those calling for Goldberg to step down or be fired were Ben Shapiro and Donald Trump, Jr.
Former “The View” co-host Meghan McCain wrote in her column for Daily Mail that Goldberg’s remarks were “bizarre, incoherent, and even dangerous,” but stopped short of demanding Whoopi be fired.
“I am not calling for Whoopi Goldberg to be fired, if only because I don’t believe there is any universe where she could possibly do anything that could get her fired – she is the crown jewel of ‘The View’ and a pop culture icon,” she wrote. “But I hope this can be used as a teachable moment to explain to millions of Americans why conflating the Holocaust as something that is specific and limited to ‘white people’ is insane, ahistorical and anti-Semitic.”
