Rosie O’Donnell on Wednesday opened up about her concerns that ABC could cancel The View, a show she co-hosted for several years, in an effort to kiss up to President Donald Trump and his Federal Communications Commission.
In a TikTok post, O’Donnell claimed she read that the network was reviewing the show for “liberal bias,” a seemingly unfounded claim that arrives just weeks after the White House ominously warned The View could be “the next to be pulled off air” due to host Joy Behar’s recent Trump criticism.
“Because it’s not enough to run the country into the ground, you have to control what people SEE, what they HEAR, what they think,” O’Donnell wrote.
“And The View? Well, that’s a little too much woman, a little too much truth — a little too much Joy Behar saying, ‘I don’t think the insurrection was a tourist visit, Karen.’ Apparently, the truth is dangerous now.”
O’Donnell’s comments arrive some two months after a report by The Daily Beast detailed how Disney and ABC News heads told the women of The View to dial down their political takes, a request the panel wasn’t cool with.
ABC executives have previously pressured hosts over their Trump talk, with late night host Jimmy Kimmel revealing in 2022 that the network’s top bosses eventually backed away after they initially asked him to tone down his criticism.
Last month, O’Donnell — whose online presence has recently infuriated Trump, leading him to threaten to revoke her US.citizenship — ripped CBS for giving in to the president’s “blackmail” with its shock Late Show cancellation.
At the time, she questioned how long other media figures outside Stephen Colbert have “against this horrific administration.”
While CBS claimed the Late Show cancellation was “purely a financial decision” (subsequent reports indicated that the show was facing financial challenges), critics have speculated that the network made the move for political reasons so parent company Paramount Global could get Trump-favouring FCC chair Brendan Carr’s approval on a multibillion-dollar merger deal.
O’Donnell, in her TikTok post, swiftly dismissed critics who characterise The View as “some radical leftist threat.”
“I used to think the First Amendment meant something. I used think you couldn’t just erase a voice because it made you uncomfortable. But that’s where we are,” she said.
“They don’t want balance. They want obedience. And they will shut down anything that reminds people of what freedom sounds like.”