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Whoopi Goldberg was forced on Thursday to walk back a marriage ‘joke’ she made on-air about Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
In an awkward apology on The View Thursday, Goldberg suggested she might have to quit the show she has co-hosted since 2007 after receiving apparent backlash from ABC bigwigs for ‘joking’ that Graham was getting married.
Her comment came during a conversation with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in which Jean-Pierre slammed the South Carolina senator for calling for a nationwide ban on abortions after 15 weeks.
‘We have Lindsey Graham, Senator Graham and other and other leaders of the Republican Party who are saying, and they’re being very clear about this, folks, we got to listen to them that they want a national ban on abortions,’ the White House press secretary told The View cohosts.
She added: ‘Senator Graham had said maybe about a month ago, early August, that he believes when it comes to marriage, when it comes to abortion, it’s for states to decide.
‘So, Senator Graham, what changed?’ Jean-Pierre asked, to which Goldberg deadpanned: ‘Well, maybe he’s getting married.’
Her woke cohost Joy Behar then said she doubts that is the case, as the audience laughed and cheered.
Goldberg, 66, then continued: ‘Do it quick, because I know people are fooling around with our marriage rights, whoever, wherever you stand, you know.’
Whoopi Goldberg, 66, was forced to issue an awkward on-air apology for a ‘joke’ she made about Sen Lindsey Graham getting married
Liberals have suggested for years that Graham, a lifelong bachelor, might be secretly gay. The senator is pictured here discussing the introduction of the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act last week
The comment comes after liberals have suggested for years that the lifelong bachelor might be secretly gay, with comedians such as Bill Maher, Jon Steward and Patti Lupone making crude remarks or implicit references to his sexual orientation over the years.
Such conversations are also prevalent on Twitter and other social media sites.
But when the show came back from a commercial break, Goldberg seemed flustered, her face wrinkled as she told the audience she needs ‘to make clear that I was doing what I do as a comic.
‘Sometimes I make jokes, and it was a joke,’ she said. ‘Nothing more than that.’
She then seemed to suggest that producers spoke with her during the break, saying: ‘I just got a whole conversation about people misunderstanding the joke.
‘I mean OK,’ Goldberg continued, as her cohosts laughed. ‘I should probably never do this show again if this is what it’s coming to.
‘It was a joke, guys, you know,’ she concluded.
Goldberg doubled down on the fact that it was a joke following a commercial break
Her comments came after White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre asked what had changed to make the South Carolina senator change his tune about abortion bans
This is just the most recent apology cohosts on the show have had to make over the past few years.
In fact, earlier this year, Goldberg was suspended for two weeks after she claimed the Holocaust ‘isn’t about race.’
‘This is white people doing it to white people so y’all go fight amongst yourselves but…’ she said back in February.
Later, she carried on: ‘Let’s be truthful about it. The Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s not about race. It’s not about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what it’s about.’
Just hours later though, following swift backlash, Goldberg tweeted out an apology.
‘On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man’. I should have said it is about both,’ she said.
‘As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, “The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race.”
‘I stand corrected.
‘The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.’
Goldberg previously had to apologize for saying the Holocaust wasn’t about race
More recently, Sunny Hostin came under fire for attacking former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, branding her a ‘chameleon’ as she insinuated the former ambassador does not use her given name, Nimrata, in an effort to appeal to Republican voters.
She was soon branded a ‘racist’ on Twitter, with many noting that Nikki is Haley’s middle name — and Hostin does not use her given first name, either.
By the afternoon, Haley, herself, decided to speak up on the matter.
‘Thanks for your concern @Sunny,’ the former South Carolina governor tweeted, claiming: ‘It’s racist of you to judge my name.
‘Nikki is an Indian name and is on my birth certificate — and I’m proud of that,’ she wrote. ‘What’s sad is the left’s hypocrisy towards conservative minorities.’
‘By the way, last I checked Sunny isn’t your birth name…,’ Haley added in her tweet to Hostin, whose birth name is Asunción Cummings Hostin.
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