The View is one of the staples of daytime television in the U.S. The series is a roundtable discussion format with several women hosts of different backgrounds talking about a variety of topics from the latest in the news to celebrity interviews. Over the past 25 years on air, The View has seen a ton of hosts enter and exit the series. Due to having a diverse group of women who all had different life experiences talking about charged issues, the show has seen its fair share of fights.
While The View hasn't devolved into pre-Sharon Osbourne firing levels of The Talk, the fights on the series could get pretty bad overall. These fights left audiences of stay-at-home people either cringing or cheering depending on who they felt was winning, except in the cases where no one wins.
Jenny McCarthy Versus Barbara Walters
Jenny McCarthy is best-known to The Masked Singer. Before boarding the 2019 series, McCarthy was on The View from 2013-2014. During the time, McCarthy had gotten into some behind-the-scenes drama, including with legendary broadcast journalist and creator of the series Barbara Walters.
In the book, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View by Ramin Setoodeh, McCarthy says that Walters was mean to her off-camera due to her believing the anti-vaccine rhetoric. She also said that Walters would make McCarthy change her outfit if she didn't like it.
Rosie O'Donnell Versus Barbara Walters
Comedian, actor, and TV host Rosie O'Donnell had two year-long stints on The View: 2006-2007 as a and 2014-2015 as a co-host. During her first stint on the series, O'Donnell made some comments about a Miss USA scandal that was handled by Donald Trump. The winner, Tara Conner, was caught drinking and using drugs underage. Trump said that she could keep her title if she went to rehab. Having seen the segment, Trump didn't like O'Donnell's comments and called demanding for her firing.
Walters was able to smooth things over with Trump, issuing an on-air apology for the statement. According to Ladies Who Punch, O'Donnell was hurt and angry at Walters for it. She said, "I definitely yelled. I said how disappointed I was and how shocked and hurt I was that she wouldn't stand up for me. I felt very betrayed about her going behind my back and speaking to Donald Trump in Trumpian language."
Joy Behar And Whoopi Goldberg Walk Off Set
The progressive political views of The View co-hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg are well-known to audiences. Needless to say, when prolific Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly came on the show in 2010, viewers were expecting some tension on the series. Despite a good start to the interview, things took a turn when O'Reilly mentioned 9/11 and made a disparaging comment about Muslims.
Goldberg and Behar exploded at O'Reilly for his racist rhetoric before walking off-set. Walters went on to condemn what O'Reilly said, but made it clear that she found Goldberg and Behar's actions unacceptable. She said to audiences, "You have just seen what should not happen. We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands and screaming and walking off stage."
Joy Behar Versus Meghan McCain: Vaccines
It's hard to find two co-hosts who hated each other more than The View's Joy Behar and Meghan McCain. The two were so diametrically opposed to each other that they would probably argue about the color of the sky. In May 2021, the two were bickering about COVID vaccines and reasons why people would not want them. Behar believed it was a politics stopping people, while McCain insisted it wasn't that simple.
McCain said, "When you come on the show and just say, 'Oh, we're owning the libs.' It's just factually inaccurate about the demographics who are not getting the vaccine." It devolved from there until Behar and McCain were pretty much screaming at each other. At that point, Whoopi Goldberg finally called for a commercial.
Joy Behar Versus Meghan McCain: Politics
Another of the May 2021 arguments between Behar and McCain focused on the Republican Party. In this fight, things started when Behar called the GOP the "QAnon Party" while the hosts were talking about the sex trafficking charges that Rep. Matt Gaetz was facing. (Gaetz has denied these allegations). In the conversation, McCain insisted that the GOP was taking the charges seriously, but Behar disagreed.
Things devolved from there, culminating with McCain shouting at Behar, "You saying the Republican Party is trash is—I don't care! It is irrelevant to me! Who cares? Who cares? You say it every single day! Every single day! Oh my God!" Goldberg cut to commercial (and McCain has since exited the series as a host).
Rosie O'Donnell Versus Elisabeth Hasselbeck
It's rare to see a friendship fall apart in real-time, but it's what happened between Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck back in 2007. O'Donnell and Hasselbeck quickly became friends when the former ed the series in 2006. That lasted until an infamous episode of The View where the hosts talked about the Iraq War. Hasselbeck said that the U.S. had enemies in Iraq, which sparked O'Donnel's ire who pointed out that it wasn't Iraq that attacked the US.
What happened was a discussion and fight so intense that producers refused to cut to commercial even when the other hosts were begging for it. O'Donnell said to Hasselbeck, "I asked you if you believed what the Republicans were saying, and you said nothing. That's cowardly."
Hasselbeck responded, "Do not call me a coward because, number one, I sit there every single day and open my heart to tell people exactly what I believe." Their friendship was pretty much over after this.