Politics

Whoopi, Behar storm off “View” set after mosque fight with O’Reilly

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The ladies of “The View” finally met a guest who doesn’t pipe down as soon as they all start talking over him, and they didn’t like it much. As Bill O’Reilly argued that putting a mosque so near Ground Zero is “not appropriate,” hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar shouted their objections before Behar got up off the couch saying, “I don’t want to sit here with him.” Goldberg followed suit to the cheers of the studio audience, and they both left the set.

After their exit, the conversation downshifted into a calmer interview tone as Walters and O’Reilly argued opposite sides of the issue. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the show’s resident right-of-center personality, wondered why Obama had shifted rhetoric from “terrorist” to “Islamic radical,” suggesting the term “terrorist” is more religiously neutral. She, too, got applause. Behar and Goldberg then came back on set and Behar apologized to O’Reilly as he continued to lay out his argument for Walters. (CORRECTION: Behar said she came back on “because [O’Reilly] apologized.” She did not apologize for leaving.)

“(The mosque issue) has separated the president from the folks,” O’Reilly said.

Walters took a closing shot at the end of the segment: “You have written a book called ‘Pinheads and Patriots,’ and at this moment is very hard to tell which you are.”