The View Breaks Silence on Jimmy Kimmel Suspension, Blasts Trump for Not Knowing How First Amendment Works

The View has finally broken its silence on the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC and parent company Disney, offering a lesson in the First Amendment to President Donald Trump and his administration.

“Did ya’ll really think we weren’t gonna talk about Jimmy Kimmel?” Whoopi Goldberg said as she opened up the show.

She explained that the panel was waiting for Kimmel to address the suspension on his own ahead of Thursday’s The View, and Friday’s show was on tape.

On Monday, the panel of Goldberg, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin was ready to speak out against Kimmel’s suspension, but stopped short of attacking their own network.

Instead, they went after Trump, blasting the president over remarks he made during an Air Force One gaggle about it being up to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to pull licenses for networks that give him bad publicity.

“No, it’s not up to Brendan Carr,” Goldberg said. “It is not up to him. I don’t understand how you are the man in charge of the nation and you still don’t understand how the First Amendment works.”

Goldberg then motioned for Hostin, the panel’s lone lawyer, to explain.

“You know, freedom of speech undergirds our democracy and our founders were clear on that,” Hostin said. “Our founders drafted the First Amendment to specifically protect the rights of citizens to criticize the government. Thomas Jefferson in particular said the citizens must be able to criticize officials because, quote, ‘they will try to impose their thinking and modes of thinking on others,’ unquote.”

Perhaps the harshest words came from Navarro, who invoked her experience under dictatorships in Nicaragua to rag on Trump.

“A bully always comes back for more,” Navarro warned before a commercial break. “So they need to stand up and we need to demand the same from ourselves!”

Read the exchange here:

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: basically both sides and the middle of the aisle are saying you don’t do this. This is not how we work. But you know who still doesn’t have a clear message about all of this? Check it out.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP [tape]: I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me. I get 97% negative, and yet I won easily, won all seven swing states, won everything, and — and then 97% against, you get only bad publicity or press. I mean, they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It would be up to Brendan Carr.

GOLDBERG: No, it’s not up to Brendan Carr. It is not up to him. I don’t understand how you are the man in charge of the nation and you still don’t understand how the First Amendment works. Do you want to remind him because you are the lawyer. Please do.

SUNNY HOSTIN: I would like to. Thank you, Whoopi. You know, freedom of speech undergirds our democracy and our founders were clear on that. Our founders drafted the First Amendment to specifically protect the rights of citizens to criticize the government. Thomas Jefferson in particular said the citizens must be able to criticize officials because, quote, they will try to impose their thinking and modes of thinking on others, unquote. And the Supreme Court time and time again has reinforced its support for the law of the land, the First Amendment. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In 1929, I remember being in law school — not in 1929 —

SARA HAINES: You look amazing!

HOSTIN: Thank you. I remember being in law school in 1991 and my constitutional law professor said that in 1929 just inn Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the greats, said that we must protect the freedom to express the thought we hate. Think about that. We must protect the freedom to express the thought we hate. So Justice Sotomayor said last week that every time I listen to a lawyer trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way I think to myself that law school failed. Well, my law school, Notre Dame, didn’t fail. I know very well what the freedom of speech means. I know all of you know very much what the freedom of speech means and the president of the United States should know what the — what freedom of speech means.

ANA NAVARRO: Well, listen, for me, I want to start by thanking our loyal viewers for demanding truth and courage from us. We deserve — you deserve it and we will give it to you. And here —

GOLDBERG: As we have for 30 — almost 30 years.

NAVARRO: The part that Joe understand that is so ironic to me is how the horrible senseless assassination of Charlie Kirk, a man I disagreed with, but who stood for debate, who stood for freedom of speech, is being used to silence people and cancel people. I don’t understand how in this country where the First Amendment made to the constitution was to guarantee freedom of the press and freedom of speech, the government itself is using its weight and power to bully and scare people into silence. Look, you know, I have to tell you this, I lived through a right-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua, Samoza, I lived through a left-wing dictatorship in Nicaragua under Ortega. This is what dictators do. It does not matter the ideology. At first, they come before the people with big platforms, at first they silence the press, but then they come for all of us because their intent is to scare us into silence and self-censorship. Look at the things that this government has done. They kicked the AP out of the Oval Office for not saying Gulf of America. They cut the funding of NPR and the corporation for public broadcasting. They are demanding reporters sign a pledge that reporters will only report on what the Pentagon wants them to report on. That is not how the First Amendment works. And I will say to you all, to all of us, look. We have seen tech titans go into the Oval Office, we are seeing media moguls, publishers of newspapers, we are seeing all of them try to make the peace with Donald Trump. A bully always comes back for more. So they need to stand up and we need to demand the same from ourselves! [ Applause ]

Watch above via ABC.