The View hosts butt heads on Chuck Schumer caving to GOP on spending bill: ‘That is unacceptable!’ – UK Times

Amid the growing backlash that Chuck Schumer is facing over his decision to vote with Republicans to advance a stopgap spending bill and avert a government shutdown, the hosts of The View clashed on whether the Senate minority leader made the right decision.

While the show’s resident conservative panelist Alyssa Farah Griffin said that Schumer did the “prudent, responsible thing,” Sunny Hostin vehemently disagreed with her colleague and called it “unacceptable” that the New York Democrat “caved” to the GOP and President Donald Trump.

The show also revealed on Monday that despite the recent postponement of Schumer’s book tour due to planned protests by progressive activists at upcoming events, the Democratic leader is still scheduled to sit at The View table on Tuesday for an interview.

“So when Chuck gets here tomorrow, we can all say to him: ‘Hey, what the hell?!’” Whoopi Goldberg told viewers.

Since joining Senate Republicans on Friday to vote for a continuing resolution that allowed for the government to stay open, a move that sparked outrage among both moderate and leftist House Democrats, Schumer has defended his vote as the lesser evil of two bad options.

“The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” he told The New York Times in an interview, adding that Trump and Musk could suddenly “say all of SNAP is not essential” if the government was indefinitely shut down.

At the top of Monday’s broadcast of the ABC talk show, Griffin conceded that Schumer’s “messaging on this was a disaster” as he “made people believe he was going to fight” and not vote for the spending bill before ultimately reversing course. At the same time, she argued that “no one wins in a government shutdown,” and Schumer ended up making the correct decision.

“Who decides what stays open in a government shutdown? The Office of Management and Budget, which is run by a man appointed by Donald Trump named Russ Vought,” she stated. “You all may remember he’s known as the architect of Project 2025. Do you think he’s going to keep the goods and services Democrats care the most about open? No. He’s going to prioritize what actually supports Donald Trump’s agenda, and they would keep the government shut down effectively as long as they wanted to.”

Griffin added: “Democrats would have to make concessions to reopen it. It would literally actually implement DOGE without having to have DOGE in place. I think he did the prudent, responsible thing. I get wanting a fight, but what you fight on matters.”

Hostin, meanwhile, shot back that “this was a fight that needed to happen” but didn’t because of Schumer. Asserting that “Republicans would have had to own that government shutdown” because they control the White House and both chambers of Congress, she noted she’s “not alone in this opinion,” referencing Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats who have lambasted Schumer.

“I want a party that doesn’t want to cave. I want a party that’s an opposition party because what Schumer just did is he cleared the way for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to gut Social Security, to cut Medicare, to cut Medicaid,” Hostin exclaimed. “That is unacceptable, and it’s past time for Democrats to stop acting like this is business as usual and fighting by the rules, but the rule book has been thrown out by the Republican Party, and that is just the truth!”

With the studio audience roaring in approval at Hostin’s remarks, Griffin jumped in to ask “how would the government reopen” if it had gone into shutdown, noting that it was only congressional Democrats that would be forced to come to the bargaining table.

“Let the Republicans do what the Republicans do,” Hostin retorted.

“Which is what, though?” Griffin wondered, prompting Hostin to fire back: “They’re destroying the country!”

Co-host Ana Navarro, a Never-Trump conservative, offered up that “Republicans and Democrats are cut from a different cloth” and that the Democratic Party doesn’t “have the transactional callousness to let people feel the pain of a government shutdown” that the GOP possesses.

“There are government workers that are furloughed. There are departments that are shut down. There are benefits that are not received,” Navarro continued.

“The government is going to do it,” Hostin interjected. “The Republicans are going to do it anyway.”

Eventually, Goldberg chimed in to say that she is “going to wait personally” to pass judgment on Schumer since the senator was set to arrive on the set the following day for an interview that was ostensibly to discuss his new book Antisemitism in America: A Warning. Right before The View went to air on Monday, a spokesperson for Schumer announced his “book events are being rescheduled” amid “security concerns,” which likely referenced Democratic activists’ planned protests at these stops.

“It’s very rare that we get someone to come to our table as soon as something has been done because usually, they have enough time to decide that we’re not the place they want to come,” Goldberg said. “But Chuck doesn’t have that much time, so we’re going to get him tomorrow, and we can talk to him, and then we don’t have to wonder.”

After Navarro pointed out that he’s currently promoting his new tome, Goldberg added: “He’s also got a book, but I think the book is really not the focal thing, but we’ll talk about the book as well.”