‘The View’ Co-Hosts Decry Political Violence In Wake Of Charlie Kirk Assassination; Whoopi Goldberg Calls Murder “A Horror”

The View struck a somber tone today when moderator Whoopi Goldberg and her co-panelists decried the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk Wednesday.

“I don’t even know how to start this,” Goldberg said at the top of the ABC daytime talk show, “because this is just beyond devastating. Our hearts, of course, go out to the family of Charlie Kirk who was shot and killed yesterday on a college campus in Utah.”

Watch the segment below.

After showing footage of politicians “from both sides of the aisle” speaking out against violence, Goldberg said, “Isn’t a fundamental part of being an American that we are able to express our opinions to each other without fear, without this kind of horror happening, and it seems to be something we have been seeing more and more of, and it’s not even left or right, it’s just people being taken out because of their beliefs, their thoughts.”

The panel’s conservative voice, Alyssa Farah Griffin, said, “Regardless of your politics, we have got to get to a place in this country, where we see people we disagree with not as our enemies, but as fellow Americans with different viewpoints that we are willing to engage.” Griffin added that the murder will “hit young Republicans really hard” because Kirk made them feel they were not alone on college campuses. “I hope it doesn’t have a chilling effect, whether you’re left or right, on your ability to speak your mind. I know the one thing we all agree about on this table, we all share our viewpoints, and we should be able to do that without fear.”

Said Sara Haines, “Although we don’t all align with his his views, what I deeply aligned with was he said, ‘When we stop talking, that’s when things get bad.’ The irony of a man who would go across the country to college campuses, that’s the pinnacle of thought differences. It’s where you’re supposed to have conversations…The irony of being violently killed while saying those words of what we need more of in this country, I know all of us agree on that part, as there’s never a place for political violence.”

Sunny Hostin spoke about the loss to Kirk’s family. “This man was 31 years old with two children, I think ages one and three, a family man. Now these children will grow up without their father. [His wife] will grow with old without her husband. There’s just no place for this kind of violence in this country. I am heartbroken over it. I cannot believe that someone would kill another person because they were speaking their beliefs. This is antithetical to who we are as Americans. The First Amendment is the first amendment for a reason. We should be able to voice whatever opinions.”

Joy Behar was next to speak, saying, “This political climate that we’re in is not unfamiliar to me, being the age that I’m at. In 1963 Medgar Evers was assassinated. In 1963 JFK was assassinated. In 1965 Malcolm X was assassinated. In 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated and in 1968 Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and we lived through all of that. It was a turbulent time. I was very young and I think it’s one of the reasons I got married so young, to tell you the truth, because it was such a scary time. You kind of clung to each other.”

Behar added, “I’d like to be positive about it…We got better. I think we will again. We’re having a traumatic period right now.”

Goldberg, mentioning the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the assault against Paul Pelosi and the murders of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, said, “This is not the way we do it, and we say this every time, but somehow it’s not resonating. And I hope that young Republicans never forget that they have a voice. They have a voice. We all have voices. We should never, ever be afraid. This is it’s beyond, beyond.”