The View Reacts to Donald Trump, Utah Gov. Responses to Charlie Kirk Shooting

Whoopi Goldberg launched their discussion on Monday with two clips from two different Republican leaders. The first was President Trump’s much quoted Fox & Friends appearance where he brushed off the idea of trying to bring people together by saying that the radical right just wants law and order and safe borders. “The radicals on the left are the problem,” he said.

This was then countered with Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s remarks on Friday, where he offered a much more level response, arguing that in moments like these, “We can’t return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence: It metastasizes because we can always point the finger at the other side.”

The women of The View all agreed that they preferred the tone and sentiment of Cox’s message, though Alyssa Farah Griffin admitted she’s not “optimistic” that it would be his message that would resonate the strongest.

Nevertheless, she emphasized that when you put politics and rhetoric aside, “There is a 31-year-old who I didn’t necessarily agree with on many things who’s dead today and whose wife doesn’t have him, his kids will be raised without him, because he was in the public space being the man in the arena, standing up for talking about what he believed in.”

The problem with Trump’s message, which is resonating with many on the right, is that political violence — as evidenced by just the past few years — does not choose only one side. And quite frankly, it might not even necessarily be about someone’s politics, really, when you get down to the root of the violent choices.

“When we swear there’s just one side, we’re not being part of the solution,” she asserted. “I would rather never have a place in public life again and call the truth of what I see, which is that the rhetoric, the radicalization, the lonely places and deep, dangerous places people go on social media, is driving people to the most dangerous corners and dangerous actions. It is bigger than politics, and if we don’t acknowledge that, we are contributing to the problem.”

She then quoted Governor Cox, who said at his press conference, “There are conflict entrepreneurs out there who benefit from radicalizing us.” Griffin called out the “tech companies that make billions of dollars by giving us an algorithm that’s meant to make us hate our neighbor,” urging people to “reject it, touch grass, talk to your neighbor, talk to humans. We have to be the change we want to see.”

Sara Haines quoted former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who issued a warning about the growing prevalence of smart phones and social media. “When we are less invested in one another, we are more susceptible to polarization and less able to pull together to face the challenges that we cannot solve alone: relationships, service, and purpose,” she quoted. “That is the root of these deep problems we’re at.”

She argued that it’s not “political division right now is what’s driving these violent acts,” but rather that our society has lost that “third space” outside of work and family. “Community’s used to be based on churches, the local sports stores, hobby places. We used to interact with each other,” she said. “It’s not a coincidence that the arch goes up the same time as social media and smartphones.”

To that point, Sunny Hostin called out a comment made by Governor Cox that she could not agree with, and that’s when he said, “Bad stuff happens and for 33 hours I was praying that if this had to happen here, that it wouldn’t be one of us, that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country. But it did happen here and it was one of us.”

“I think that, while definitely not intentional, I think his comment reinforced the narrative that violence in this country is not homegrown,” Hostin said before citing former FBI Director Christopher Wray, who’d said the number one area of attack and terrorism in the United States is domestic terrorism.

“American politics has long been haunted by political violence, homegrown. And I think, I hope that if anything can come out of this horrible tragedy,” Hostin continued, “that we take a look at ourselves and our actions and try to change our country from within.”

Ana Navarro agreed that the shooting death of Kirk was “horrible” and leaving his kids to grow up without a father is also horrible, but she made it a point to name Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, who was murdered in a politically-motivated killing alongside her husband Mark. They, too, had two small children, who will now have to grow up without either their mother or their father.

“And so, to me, it doesn’t matter what their political persuasion was,” she insisted, saying that the problem is how disagreements are being handled with violence.

“A lot of people are out there trying to portray Charlie Kirk as if he was spreading pixie dust around the country. A lot of people, to use the word of Governor Cox, found what he said ‘inflammatory’ or worse,” she said.

“But that’s not the point. The point is, we are in America. He has the right to say it. I have the right to disagree and find it abhorrent,” she argued. “But our weapon in this country is debate, our weapon is freedom of speech, our weapon is organizing, our weapon is our vote. Our weapon should never be a gun.”