Danger to Society: 12 Times The View Used Inciting Rhetoric in 2025

It’s that time of year again! With ABC’s The View on their winter hiatus (before picking back up again in early January), we at NewsBusters wanted to take a look back at some of the lowlights the show had to offer viewers in 2025. Today, we’ll be looking back at 12 times the liberal ladies used inciting rhetoric to foment hostility and hatred of their political opponents on the right.

Whether it’s overtly calling for violence and death, using dehumanizing rhetoric, or painting America’s future as so bleak and hopeless that the only avenue for change was violence, The View was a home for it in 2025. And it only got worse as the year dragged on, often in the form of anti-military screeds.

Call to Violence? Hostin Huffs Dems Not Willing to ‘Fight and Die’ for Rights Like Older Gens

The most overt call to violence came from co-host Sunny Hostin back in March. She decried that her fellow Democrats were not “meeting the moment” of “existential crisis” for America, and she wanted them to be willing to “fight and die” against President Trump and Republicans:

The Democrats are not meeting the moment. It is very clear that Medicaid is on the table. It is very clear that Social Security is on the table. It is very clear that people will die! The baby boomers, the civil rights generation, they knew what they had to do! They were willing to fight and die for their rights! This generation of Congress, they are not meeting the moment! This is an existential crisis!

 

 

ABC News: Trump Ordered National Guard to 'Attack the Protesters,' Start ‘Civil War’

The View was one of the loudest sets of voices in stoking hatred against the National Guard by way of creating and pushing wild conspiracy theories, claiming they were out to slaughter people in the streets.

In June, they claimed the troops were deployed to crack down on free speech, “attack the protesters,” and start a “civil war”:

HOSTIN: I think what really matters from sort of a long view here, is the fact that he is militarizing and deploying the Guard for the purpose of policing Americans' protest activity, right, our freedom of speech, our freedom of assembly. And there's a very big stark demarcation between military troops and law enforcement. Public law enforcement. Civilian law enforcement. And you are an army turned inside to police its citizens can cause chaos and fascism. And so, I think that’s the way -

GOLDBERG: Civil war.

HOSTIN: And civil war.

 

 

ABC: ICE, National Guard, Marines ‘Just Following Orders’ Like Nazis

That hatred against the National Guard festered for much of the year. A few days after claiming they were given the mission of starting a civil war, they claimed the Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and the Marines were “just following orders” like the Nazis:

FARAH GRIFFIN:I think it's very important to remember it's a commander-in-chief that’s made these decisions. They're following the orders.

GOLDBERG: Yeah. Think back, y'all. Where have you heard that before?

BEHAR: 1938!

GOLDBERG: “I’m just following orders.” By my commander-in-chief.

FARAH GRIFFIN: But again, can I just say. I want to finish.

GOLDBERG: No, no, because this is my point, we don't want to be what they were!

(…)

GOLDBERG: We do have to be careful, because when we say things like, “just following orders,” it leads to that.

 

 

Sunny Hostin Says CBP, ICE Deserve Violent 'Reckoning' Coming for Them

Hostin was back at it again in July when she suggested that ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents deserved the violent “reckoning” they had coming for them.

As co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin was talking about a violent attack on CBP agents, Hostin responded by essentially saying they had it coming:

FARAH GRIFFIN: What I am seeing is an uptick in rhetoric against CBP and ICE enforcers who are dealing with this problem because they're being told by the President of the United States that they have to. And then this past week, there was a very dangerous attack on CBP officials in McAllen Texas. Several were injured.

(...)

HOSTIN: If they would do their jobs the way that I think they should be doing their jobs, which is unmasked without disappearing people from the streets, I don't think that the public would feel as endangered.

(...)

So, in my world, if you mask yourself because you don't want to be seen, because you don't want to be seen – because there will be a reckoning for some of the actions that law enforcement, actual law enforcement have done!

ABC News Says ‘We’re Already in The Tyranny’ of Trump’s ‘Dictatorship’

In 2025, The View cast was very busy trying to convince their audience that America was already a lost country, subjugated underneath a Trump dictatorship:

GOLDBERG: We don't know who is considered American by America who has changed the rules every couple of days on where– what's going– kids are going to court by themselves.

HOSTIN: That’s a step toward tyranny.

GOLDBERG: We’re already in the tyranny! It’s not a step! We in it.

HOSTIN: I would agree with that.

The View: Trump Crime Crackdown About Literal 'War' Against Americans

The rhetoric was ratcheted up in September when co-host Behar claimed Trump was literally carrying out a “war” against the American people by cracking down on crime:

BEHAR: Point two, didn't he run on being an anti-war candidate. The MAGA people who voted for him, one of the reasons they liked him is because he was against war. He took on Bush. I guess that didn't include war against your own people in your own country.

SARA HAINES: Yes, that's clearly what he is saying here.

 

 

America Is ‘Screwed’: The View Already Back to Using Inciting Rhetoric

Even the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a liberal extremist wasn’t enough to get them to stop their use of inciting rhetoric.

Just days after paying lip service and saying the rhetoric needed to be turned down, Behar shouted about how America was “screwed” as a country:

BEHAR: I mean, there's no end to the incompetency that we are experiencing as Americans! So, I can almost not even talk about individual situations like this, because the overall picture and the elephant in the room is that we're screwed!

GOLDBERG: No, we're not screwed because –

BEHAR: I know you say that every day but I feel like we are.

GOLDBERG: I say it every day, and yet we are still standing.

BEHAR: Just barely.

 

 

Behar Crash Out: ‘You're Delusional’ to Think U.S. Will ‘Survive’ Trump

By the end of September, Behar had lost all hope for America’s future. She proclaimed it was “delusional” for anyone to think that America would “survive” Trump’s second term:

BEHAR: If you guys think that we can survive another three-and-half years of this, I think you're delusional. Every day there's some nihilistic thing --

HAINES: It's only Tuesday, Joy. Can we not start there?

BEHAR: I mean, I hate to be Debbie downer. But every day this guy is undoing something in this country that we value. Every day. Every day is a shock and awe here. And I for one am skeptical that we will survive this.

 

 

Trying to Incite Murder? ABC News Claims National Guard to Steal Election

Despite The View’s claims that America was living under a dictatorship, America wasn’t and we could still elect our leaders. But according to Behar, Americans no longer had that ability.

She directed her ire once again against the National Guard on October 7 (her birthday) when she erroneously asserted that the Guard was out to steal all future elections for Trump:

FARAH GRIFFIN: There is crime in American cities. But the way to deal with it is get the funding that you need for police, get the training that you need, and work with local officials.

BEHAR: This is a pretext to stop the next election! That's what I think it is.

(...)

BEHAR: And if they stop us from voting, that's the one thing people have.

GOLDBERG: I mean, it's the one thing that makes us very different from lots of other countries. Our votes, they do count. I do know that they count.

BEHAR: If we are allowed to vote.

 

 

‘Damn, If He Isn't a Dictator’: ABC News Claims Trump Not Leaving Ever

The dictator talk had become a staple. On October 27, Goldberg was confident in affirmatively proclaiming that Trump was in fact a “dictator.” She even prompted her audience to do something about it:

GOLDBERG: Well, you-know-who told us he was going to be a dictator on day one and, damn, if he isn't a dictator.

(...)

GOLDBERG: So, just so we're clear, you have nothing to say about any of this [pointing to the audience]. Just understand that. Okay? Republicans have pretty much given him free rein up until now. Are they going to let this happen? Are y'all going to let it happen?

The View: GOP ‘Trying to Hold People Hostage Against Their Healthcare’

During the height of the government shutdown, Behar framed the Republican position as one looking to harm the American people and leave them for dead:

BEHAR: What is the endgame exactly for the Republicans though? To trying to hold people hostage against their healthcare, to give more tax breaks to rich people? I mean, what are they trying to do?

The View Tries to Scare Americans on Halloween with Stolen Election LIES

The View-Anon. On Halloween, they took up California Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) unfounded conspiracy theory that America wasn’t going to have any more elections because Trump was going to steal them all:

BEHAR: I just want to say one thing. I don't think Gavin Newsom would be saying this if Donald Trump hasn't thrown in the gauntlet in the first place. It's not like he's doing it to attack.

HAINES: Is it en vogue for every candidate to say, it's probably rigged?

BEHAR: Yeah, but who started this?!

 

 

What The View had spent the year doing was extremely dangerous for the lives of people on the right and for the country. By erroneously and hysterically claiming that Trump was a dictator, the country had no future, and that people didn’t have access to the ability to effect change via the ballot box, they were leaving impressionable extremists only one option: violence.