Whoopi Goldberg‘s suspension from The View over comments she made about the Holocaust has ended and she returned to the air on Monday.
“Well, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The View, and, yes, I am back,” the moderator said, kicking off the ABC talk show.
Her co-host Joy Behar told her she was missed — and Goldberg said it was mutual.
“I missed you all, too,” she replied. “I got to tell you, there’s something kind of marvelous about being on a show like this because we are The View — and this is what we do.”
She continued, “Sometimes we don’t do it as elegantly as we could… but it’s five minutes to get in important information about topics. And that’s what we try to do every day.”
Goldberg went on to “thank everybody who reached out while I was away.” She said she “listened” and was “grateful” for the support and feedback.
“And I hope it keeps all the important conversations happening because we’re going to keep having tough conversations,” she said, “because this is what we have been hired to do. It’s not always pretty, as I said, and it’s not always as other people would like to hear, but it is an honor to sit at this table and be able to have these conversations because they’re important. They’re important to us as a nation, and to us more so as a human entity.”
She then kicked off Hot Topics, by saying, “We want to get started because that’s what we do.”
The controversy stemmed from Goldberg repeatedly saying on the Jan. 31 show that the Holocaust was “not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
The co-hosts challenged that — including Ana Navarro saying that the Holocaust was “about white supremacy” — but Goldberg insisted, “But these are two white groups of people… This is white people doing it to white people, so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves.”
Goldberg apologized on social media amid criticism, including by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and the Holocaust Museum.
“On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race but about man’s inhumanity to man,'” she wrote. “I should have said it is about both. As Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected.” She added: “The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.”
She also apologized on the Feb. 1 show — on which Greenblatt appeared.
“I said the Holocaust wasn’t about race and was instead about man’s inhumanity to man,” Goldberg said. “But it is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race.”
That night, Goldberg — who has said in the past that she does not practice any religion, but identifies as Jewish (adopting her stage name, after being born Caryn Johnson, because of that) — was suspended by the network for two weeks.
“Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments,” Kim Godwin, president at ABC News, said in a statement. “While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
Goldberg’s co-hosts didn’t make her absence a Hot Topic on air, barely referencing it as the suspension started. However, Navarro publicly supported her, saying on CNN that she and her colleagues on The View “know what’s in [Goldberg’s] heart,” and that Goldberg is “not an antisemite.”
Sunny Hostin told People magazine, “Let me say this, I’ve been on the show for five years. Whoopi is my dear friend and my colleague, and I adore her. And I think that her apology was sincere, and I look forward to working with her at the table.” She added, correcting herself, “I should say, I don’t think, I know. I know her apology was sincere.”
Sara Haines shared a photo of herself with Goldberg and wrote in the comments, “To learn from a moment is all we can ask of anyone. And prioritizing punitive measures at the expense of the message/issue (and teaching moment) are misguided.”
