Cohosts on “The View” Friday blamed President Donald Trump for issues of racism across the country after a white student at Yale called police on a black student who was napping in the common room.
The comments came during a panel discussion about the incident and several other instances, including one that happened in Philadelphia when police arrested two black guys at a Starbucks who claimed they were hanging out and waiting for their friend after being denied access to the bathrooms because they hadn’t paid for anything.
“We are finding this is happening a lot whether, you know, you’re having coffee or what,” Goldberg said. “We’re trying to figure out why because we thought we kind of got past this part, you know, where we all sort of — we can all have things to drink … we can say hello, but what is happening? Does it come from the top? I think it does.”
“It’s similar to the previous conversation. As you said, the fish rots from the head, and I think that he [Trump] has unleashed people just doing whatever they feel like doing, you know, going into the worst parts of yourself,” Joy Behar responded.
Sunny Hostin questioned whether it was all Trump’s fault and said that advances in technology like camera phones were now allowing us to see situations that have always been happening.
“You’re seeing it all the time, and I have to tell you. I don’t know that it comes just from Trump being president, and what we have in the air. Quite frankly, I think these microaggressions, I think they have been happening to black people from the beginning of the time really here in the United States. Now we have video of it, and so I think you’re seeing, you know, for people of color, these kind of encounters sadly are expected at this point.”
Goldberg interjected that her co-host was wrong and said four years ago these things weren’t happening.
“It is kind of new behavior because one of the things that wasn’t happening is you could actually sit four years ago in a Starbucks for as long as you wanted to,” Goldberg shared. “But I think something else is in the air that where you could have these conversations and say, you know, that wasn’t very nice as [Barack] Obama tried to do and say, ‘hey. let’s try to put you guys together’ and he caught a bunch of hell. Something else has been unleashed in the country. And I feel it does come from him [Trump].”