“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg snapped at fellow co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin for bringing up slain officer David Dorn, who died during the 2020 George Floyd riots.
The co-hosts were debating the left-wing outrage over country singer Jason Aldean’s new song, “Try That in a Small Town,” which featured references to the 2020 riots over the death of George Floyd and rising crime. Griffin pointed to the widely ignored death of Dorn, who died in June 2020 after being shot in the torso by suspected rioters while trying to defend a jewelry store from looters.
Goldberg claimed Aldean should not have made his music video or song about Black Lives Matter. Griffin responded that Aldean likely did “not glorify violence or racism,” and said Dorn’s death was “evil” as well as Floyd’s.
“George Floyd’s death, murder was evil, it was wrong, it was unacceptable. But so was the killing of someone like David Dorn, a black, retired police officer who was defending his friend’s store and was shot in the riots in the aftermath of that movement. So I think if people of good faith can see both sides, they can see there is an issue with this song for what it means to a lot of communities but there is an issue of violence, of looting, of riots…”
“Yes, but why are you linking it to black people?” Goldberg asked. “That’s the issue.”
“That’s the issue because the imagery is what becomes problematic,” Griffin said. (RELATED: ‘Not Taught To Five-Year-Olds!’: Whoopi Goldberg Angrily Cuts Off Alyssa Farah Griffin In Discussion About CRT)
“Again, you can, there’s a lot wrong here with this,” Goldberg said. “This is a man who saw what happens when someone is out of control with their guns. He saw people get—so I don’t understand how he can be that disconnected. How people around him didn’t say, ‘hey listen, you know what, maybe there’s a better way to do this.'”
Griffin agreed the song “invoked race,” while co-host Joy Behar called the song “deplorable” and “annoying.”
Aldean doubled down on his song after accusations of it being “pro-lynching.” He said the song is about growing up in a wholesome, safe community and advocated returning to a “sense of normalcy.”
“These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” Aldean wrote in a Tuesday tweet. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it — and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage — and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music, this one goes too far.”