https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-view-told-to-tone-down-trump-bashing-by-abc-news-boss/

Multiple sources shared details with the Daily Beast about a meeting in which the ABC News president delivered a message that left the co-hosts unnerved.

Corbin Bolies 

Media Reporter

Updated May 22 2025 3:25AM EDT Published May 21 2025 8:26PM EDT 

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/ABC

Disney and ABC News have asked the hosts of The View to tone down their political rhetoric, multiple sources told the Daily Beast.

Since President Donald Trump’s election in 2024, the panel of co-hosts on The View—Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin—have consistently criticized Trump administration officials and policies.

But its constant focus on Trump and politics seems to have roiled the network’s top bosses, including Disney CEO Bob Iger and ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic.

Karamehmedovic convened a meeting with The View‘s executive producer Brian Teta and its hosts, and suggested the panel needed to broaden its conversations beyond its predominant focus on politics, two sources familiar with the meeting said. Karamehmedovic highlighted episodes with celebrity guests that he said were highly rated, one source said, and encouraged them to lean into such coverage moving forward.

The move was not framed as an edict, one source said, but the suggestion alone rankled the hosts. The group pushed back forcefully, with hosts like Navarro noting the show’s audience routinely seeks out its perspective on politics, especially when the administration’s radical attempts to upend the government can potentially affect their daily lives.

One source familiar with the meeting characterized the hosts as telling their boss, “‘This is what our audience wants. Isn’t it gonna look kind of bad if we’re all of a sudden not talking about politics?’”

Ultimately, the women found the requests “silly” and that “they were just going to keep doing their thing.”

Still, the conversation continued to stay at top of mind for at least one of the co-hosts. During Disney’s Upfront presentation day to advertisers last week, an annual glitzy gathering where media companies seek to woo brands to advertise with their shows, Navarro had a direct conversation with Iger, according to multiple sources.

Navarro thanked Iger for allowing the hosts to continue doing their jobs in a politically turbulent environment, the sources said. Iger confirmed he supported the show—but he also reaffirmed that the show needed to tone down its political rhetoric, the sources said.

The conversation made clear the suggestion to tone down the politics went all the way to the top, the sources said.

ABC News did not comment, and a Disney spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Navarro did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Another source familiar with the matter said ABC will “constantly have conversations with talent based on viewer feedback, and this instance was no different,” suggesting the show’s viewers have indicated that they want the show to be less political.

Despite suggestions otherwise by ABC’s top brass, the political coverage appears not to have affected the show’s ratings. The show was the No. 1 among daytime network talk shows and news programs during 2025’s first quarter, according to TheWrap, beating time slot competitor The Faulkner Focus on Fox News in both total viewers and women ages 25-54, its chief advertiser-focused demographic, throughout the quarter.

Even earlier this month, it maintained that No. 1 title, beating competitors like NBC’s TODAY Third Hour and TODAY with Jenna & Friends during the week of May 5, according to ABC.

The executives’ efforts to push The View in a less political direction highlight the current difficult circumstances facing media organizations as Trump and his administration set their sights on bending them to their will over critical coverage.

Trump got Disney to pay his presidential library $15 million and $1 million in legal fees in December when he sued the network and anchor George Stephanoupolous over an interview that mischaracterized a verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse as opposed to rape. Disney made the decision in part to avoid brand damage and risk stripping press freedom protections across the industry should it have lost at trial, according to The New York Times.

Trump has also been at legal war with CBS and its parent company Paramount Global, suing the two for $20 billion over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. CBS has called the lawsuit baseless, but as Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone seeks to merge the company with David Ellison’s Skydance Media, the company has entered into mediation talks with Trump to secure a settlement.

The saga has caused a crisis at 60 Minutes, leading to the resignations of veteran executive producer Bill Owens and CBS News and Stations CEO Wendy McMahon.

Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr, an outspoken supporter of Trump, has also launched an investigation into Disney and ABC over its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, and said the 60 Minutes interview would factor into the FCC’s review of the merger. And on Wednesday, Trump lashed out at an NBC News reporter and suggested NBC’s parent company Comcast “ought to be investigated.”

“Bob Iger writes a check for $15 million and then the FCC opens an investigation into DEI? What are they thinking?” one source said. “If anybody could stand up to Trump, it’s Bob Iger, and he already decided not to.”

The View, the long-running opinion talk show that became creator Barbara Walters’ crowning achievement in her celebrated run at ABC News, has long been a major player in the political media landscape. Democrats like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Harris have flocked to the show’s glass-adorned table to appeal to its predominantly female audience, and a run of Democrats and Republicans appearing on the show in 2019 prompted The New York Times Magazine to label it the “the most important TV show in America.”

Pundits speculated whether Harris’ admission at the table that she wouldn’t have done anything differently from President Joe Biden cost her the 2024 election, highlighting the show’s political relevance.

But just as common as its friendly approach to Democrats has been its vocal criticism of Trump and his policies. The show railed against the once-View regular—Trump appeared on the show more than a dozen times before effectively shunning it ahead of the 2016 election—and Goldberg warned last year his reelection could put the U.S. “in danger.”

But Trump won the election—a month after calling its panel “degenerates”—prompting the show to figure out its next move. The Daily Beast reported at the time that it planned to invite Trump to the table, though it had no plans to add an explicitly pro-Trump panelist.

Despite the conversations with Iger and Karamehmedovic, the hosts have continued to keep politics in focus this month. The women conducted a lengthy interview with former President Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden ahead of a book questioning his mental decline—though it was the Biden team that approached the show about the conversation, a Biden spokesperson told the Daily Beast.

Its “Hot Topics” segment on Tuesday also featured Behar questioning “when is Jake Tapper gonna write a book about the cognitive decline of the person who is in charge right now,” and Wednesday’s episode had a segment railing against “puppy killer” Homeland Security Kristi Noem for her bungled definition of the legal concept of habeas corpus.

But hints of a balancing act have emerged. During a robust discussion last week over the question of whether Democrats needed to focus on the question of Biden’s decline or move forward to fight Trump, Griffin appeared to strike a more balanced tone by highlighting how Trump’s low approval numbers were ahead of the Democratic Party.

“This table spends a lot of time criticizing Donald Trump and a lot of it is very valid and needs to happen, but it’s a fact his approval rating is 39 percent,” she said on Friday. “However, Democrats’ is 27 percent. People felt gaslit and lied to.”

That episode continued with a panel conversation about a Reddit post that asked whether Mother’s Day cards were appropriate for women who consider pets to be their “children.”