“The View”'s Elisabeth Hasselbeck breaks down on-air clash with Sunny Hostin over voting for Donald Trump: 'I felt alive'
“The View”'s Elisabeth Hasselbeck breaks down on-air clash with Sunny Hostin over voting for Donald Trump: 'I felt alive'
Joey NolfiFri, March 6, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC
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Sunny Hostin and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on 'The View'Credit: ABC
The View is alive with the sound of conservative clashing.
With guest cohost and staunch Republican Elisabeth Hasselbeck locked in for her week-long return to the Hot Topics table, the show has turned up the heat across recent airings. On her first day back, the Survivor alum weathered a jab from permanent liberal panelist Sunny Hostin about voting for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Now, Hasselbeck has reacted to the headline-making moment.
"The audience 'oo'ed, like, it was a gasp," producer Brian Teta told Hasselbeck when he interviewed her on The View's companion podcast, Behind the Table.
"The headlines were crazy. I know you don't read them all, but it was like, 'Elisabeth claps back,' 'audience gasps,'" Teta said.
Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sunny Hostin, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on 'The View'Credit: ABC
Hasselbeck admitted that "it felt fun" to go up against Hostin on national television.
"What's interesting, and I think having been here and seeing you work so wonderfully well, I feel like one of the greatest things is, it doesn't feel manipulated, like we have to do something," the 48-year-old said. "In your expertise and production, just be you, guide the show, and everything kind of happens because all the thinking happens before the show, with topics and deciding and how we'll get to this place that's relevant."
Hasselbeck told Teta that she loves "how the show is run right now," and that there's a "freshness" that doesn't have the "spirit of contention."
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"It always made me laugh," she said. "With guys it's like, 'They had a great debate.' When you put women there it's like, 'They fought, they pulled each other's hair, they're slashing each other with their nails.'"
Addressing the eyebrows she's raised at the table this week — including during conflicts over comments she gave comparing protective COVID masks to those worn by ICE agents to conceal their identities amid immigration raids — Hasselbeck again said that the energy at the table excites her.
"Actually, I felt alive, like, 'Yeah, let's go," she said of facing off against Hostin. "I think Sunny felt the same way. Between breaks I was like, 'That was cool, let's go.' I love debating someone who comes prepared, who's skilled, who actually has a point of view that they believe in deeply, with passion, and it comes to, let's take it another round. It's fun."
Teta told Hasselbeck that Hostin told him that the star "can give a punch" and also "take a punch," and that she won't later be "walking off the stage on the commercial break crying or angry or anything like that."
Hasselbeck was, however, famously captured on audio walking off the stage during a commercial break, crying and angry after an on-air disagreement with the late Barbara Walters in 2006.
Joy Behar also found herself on the receiving end of Hasselbeck's ire in January 2025, after the latter publicly condemned her former colleague's criticism of Carrie Underwood's decision to perform at Trump's second inauguration.
The View airs weekdays on ABC.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
