Whoopi Goldberg questioned if ‘The View’ would ever come back from commercial break after Meghan McCain went on a tangent about Alexei Navalny, instead of dating.
The “Hot Topic” was supposed to be about whether it’s wrong or not to date your best friend’s ex-husband, but Meghan McCain had a different idea on The View. After Whoopi Goldberg exasperatedly declared that “nobody cared” about anything they were discussing that day, Meghan took the opportunity to redirect to something she’s passionate about. The co-hosts just had to sit back and watch it happen.
a lot to unpack here pic.twitter.com/cSFQQjJt8O
— Déjà The View (@dejatheviewpod) April 8, 2021
Meghan routinely wears a shirt that reads “Free Navalny” on The View. It’s a reference to Alexei Navalny, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who is currently imprisoned and on a hunger strike. “My thoughts on this topic are that Alexi Navalany is sitting in a Russian gulag right now, and he’s slowly being killed, and the United States is doing nothing, and we need to hold Putin accountable… save Alexi Navalny, that’s how I feel about dating your ex.”
She then threw to commercial, saying “we’ll be right back.” A truly baffled Whoopi gave an awkward laugh and said, “will we?” with an ominous tone. Meghan said she hoped that was the case. Spoiler alert: all was fine, and the episode came back, as normal, with guest Leslie Odom Jr.
That didn’t stop fans of The View from honing in on the moment. Twitter flooded with hilarious tweets after the episode aired. Some warned Meghan with an image of Whoopi’s iconic Ghost character saying, “you in danger, girl.” Another person predicted on Twitter that “Whoopi has just about had enough and it’s only a matters of episodes before someone gets verbally dragged.”
Meghan’s off-topic moment didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. The first half of the episode derailed when none of the co-hosts had much to say about any of the pre-picked talking points. Whoopi even caught Joy Behar looking off camera and said that she knew she was “lying” about paying attention. After 15 years, Whoopi thinks that Joy’s hair grows “like Pinocchio’s nose” when she lies.
“Are you even listening to me? You’re not paying attention, are you? You don’t care about [this story]. I don’t care about this. Sunny [Hostin] doesn’t care, nobody cares. We don’t care about all these topics,” Whoopi said, laughing.