MAGA brought its infighting to The View on Tuesday, when conservative guest host Elisabeth Hasselbeck took a brutal shot at her former Fox News colleague Megyn Kelly.
“How dare you, Megyn Kelly?” Hasselbeck said on the show as the hosts discussed the Trump administration’s attacks on Iran, resulting in a retaliatory strike that killed six U.S. troops.
The show ran a clip of Kelly’s commentary on the news, in which she’d said, “My own feeling is no one should have to die for a foreign country,” in response to previous reports putting the military death toll at four. “I don’t think those four service members died for the United States. I think they died for Iran or for Israel,” Kelly said.
The comments enraged Hasselbeck, who said she was ready and willing to pick a fight with the combative SiriusXM host.
“How dare you tell a military person who has sacrificed their lives for our nation, in our uniform, when they are sacrificing their lives in our uniform—how dare you tell them or their families or our nation what they died for?” Hasselbeck said, looking directly at the camera.
Joy Behar interjected, “Oh, you better be careful. She’ll come right at you.”
Replied Hasselbeck, “I’m not afraid of her.”
She continued, “My heart, my friends in the military—you do not get to authorize who they died for. Let me just clear that up.” Hasselbeck added, “I come here. I may vote Republican, and I’m a conservative, but I’m a thinking woman, and I have a heart, with this war. Or military attack.”
Hasselbeck is one of many rotating conservatives who will fill in for former Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin until she returns from maternity leave. Hasselbeck previously co-hosted the show for nearly ten years until she was fired by producers in 2013. Reports at the time said that market research showed Hasselbeck was too conservative for the show’s audience.
Hasselbeck joined Fox & Friends months after leaving The View, and remained a co-host on the morning show from 2013 to 2015, overlapping briefly with Kelly, who was a figure on the network from 2004 to 2017. Kelly was hosting The Kelly File in the network’s primetime lineup when Hasselbeck joined the network, but the pair had always played nice—until Tuesday.
She’s since maintained a contentious relationship with the show publicly—frequently sparring with former View host Rosie O’Donnell online—before she was welcomed back as this week’s guest co-host on Monday. Last January, she slammed Behar for criticizing Carrie Underwood’s choice to perform at Trump’s inauguration. She told Fox News at the time, “I would’ve loved to be at that table today... They refuse to put anyone there who has a lick of sense on most days.”
Though Hasselbeck has so far begun each day of her fill-in role by expressing her “love” for the show’s co-hosts and avoiding on-air clashes, she occasionally bumped heads with the other hosts over allegations against Donald Trump, as indicated in the Epstein files.
“Elisabeth, I think this has backfired on Trump,” Behar said as they discussed the Clintons’ depositions about their mentions in the files.
“I don’t think so,” Hasselbeck replied, “I think you want it to, but I don’t think it has.”
“Would you like to hear President Trump testify?” Sunny Hostin asked her. Hasselbeck replied, “I would love to hear anyone who needs to testify, testify.”
