‘TOO FAR’

‘The View’ Explodes Into Heated Fight Over Dem Betrayal

The hosts clashed when Joy Behar called Haley Stevens “pathetic.”

The hosts of The View are sharply divided over Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens’ decision to endorse MAGA candidate Mike Rogers over her party’s Senate candidate, Abdul E-Sayed.

Whoopi Goldberg started the discussion by questioning Stevens’ 890-word defense of her shocking move, which some have suggested her fiancé, Jason Turkish, influenced. Stevens slammed the comments as “sexism dressed up as political analysis.”

“Go away, girl,” Goldberg said. “You made your decision. Live with it... Stand by what you did. You don’t have to explain about your fiancé or your cousin’s foot.”

But Sara Haines was insistent that Stevens was right to defend herself, as she accused El-Sayed of flirting with antisemitism by campaigning with Hasan Piker.

“He’s shown me who he is,” Haines said in a blistering rant about the Senate candidate.

Sunny Hostin pointed out that El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker following the streamer’s controversial comments, but Haines replied, heated, “I don’t know if that’s clarity or political strategy.”

Goldberg cut in, “It doesn’t matter.”

The interruption sparked a tense discussion, with the hosts talking over one another as Haines and Griffin defended Stevens from “sexism,” and Sunny Hostin and Joy Behar roasted her for flip-flopping.

“I do believe she has to speak up, though, because of the outrage at her having spoken up the first time. If people were attacking you all day long and you appeared on Anderson Cooper and didn’t do the best job explaining yourself, I would feel the need to do it too,” Haines said, after defending Stevens for turning on El-Sayed on air on Tuesday.

Stevens drew the ire of fellow Democratic lawmakers after announcing she would back Rogers over her former primary rival, El-Sayed. The pair feuded over their differing takes on the U.S.’s relationship with Israel, leading El-Sayed to call her a “distraction” to the race and disinvite her from campaigning with him. She then backed her state’s MAGA Senate candidate, and Michigan Democratic leadership removed her from the party.

Sunny Hostin said Stevens’ long-winded essay explaining her choice, which Stevens posted on X on Monday, did little to obscure the fact that she “decided to endorse a man, Mike Rogers, who has repeatedly voted against women’s reproductive rights.”

“So this is the man that she decided to endorse,” Hostin went on, “Yet now she’s saying, ‘People are against me because I’m a woman.’ I just think it’s the worst.”

Like Haines, Griffin was also adamant that Stevens was right to call out backlash to her decision. “It is blatantly sexist to say that a two-term congresswoman who’s had a career in her own right and made policy, made this decision because of her fiancé,” Griffin said.

She added, “We always criticize Trump, where you have to be with him 100 percent, or he casts you aside.”

Haines also suggested it was hypocritical for the hosts to criticize Stevens for breaking with El-Sayed, when “we said at the table no one would eat dinner with the actual elected president of the United States.”

Still, Behar said Stevens should keep her “big mouth shut.”

“So you have an issue with El-Sayed. You don’t have to go on the other side. Just be quiet,” she added. “You are now using the woman’s card, and you are endorsing someone who is against women. It’s pathetic.”

Parties have to “leave room” for candidates to “speak up for their conscience,” Haines added, drawing on her argument from the day before. Haines’ husband Max Shifrin called El-Sayed’s rhetoric on the campaign trail “disqualifying, even in a race against a Republican,” in a post on X.

Stevens “voted 99 percent with Democrats and supported every other Democrat on the ballot, and the Democratic Party chair of Michigan said she has been kicked out of the party—I don’t like it,” Haines said.

“She went a step too far,” Behar shot back.

Obsessed with pop culture and entertainment? Follow us on Substack and YouTube for even more coverage.

Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.