Fox News rages that Whoopi Goldberg’s Iran take is ‘as racist as anything’ they’ve ever heard – UK Times

Fox News is completely aghast over Whoopi Goldberg’s recent assertion that living in the United States as a Black person is comparable to the oppression that citizens of the Iranian regime face, claiming The View host’s hot take is “as racist as anything” they’ve ever heard.

During a contentious opening segment on Wednesday’s broadcast of the ABC daytime talk show, Goldberg furiously clashed with co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin over the specter of the United States going to war with Iran.

At one point in the discussion, which initially focused on the growing rift within the MAGA coalition as President Donald Trump weighs joining Israel in its bombing campaign, Griffin took aim at the repressive and totalitarian government led by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Let’s just remember, too, the Iranians literally throw gay people off of buildings. They don’t adhere to basic human rights,” she noted, prompting Goldberg to object and bring up hate crimes in America.

“Let’s not do that, because if we start with that, we have been known in this country to tie gay folks to the car,” the Oscar-winner exclaimed before adding: “Listen, I’m sorry. They used to just keep hanging Black people.”

After Goldberg suggested “it is the same” between the United States and Iran and that “there’s no way I can make you understand it,” Griffin pushed back: “The Iranian regime today is nothing compared to the United States.”

“Every day we are worried,” Goldberg declared during the fiery exchange. “Do we have to be worried about our kids? Are our kids gonna get shot because they’re running through somebody’s neighborhood?”

While Griffin said she understood where Goldberg was coming from, she added that it was “important we remember there are places much darker than this country and people who deserve rights.” When Goldberg brought up that African-Americans were not granted full voting rights until the 1960s, Griffin retorted that “they don’t have free and fair elections in Iran” and that it’s “not the same universe.”

Needless to say, Goldberg’s remarks drew widespread backlash, with Iranian dissidents calling her “offensive” comments “deeply misguided and dismisses the brutal realities faced by millions of Iranians.”

Of course, the segment was also pure unadulterated ragebait for right-wing media, and especially for the hosts and pundits at Fox News, who tore into the Sister Act star across multiple segments on Wednesday and Thursday.

“It’s like a Saturday Night Live bit to me,” primetime host and Trump confidant Sean Hannity sneered. “I get a headache. I take an Excedrin Extra Strength and hopefully the memory is erased as quickly as possible.”

While other Fox News stars called on Goldberg to experience the oppression in Iran “firsthand” while claiming she is out of touch due to her wealth, network anchor Harris Faulkner tore into the actress for peddling bigotry and racism.

“It’s asinine what I just heard from Whoopi Goldberg,” she fumed on Thursday’s broadcast of The Faulkner Focus while interviewing Fox News contributor Gianno Caldwell. “You know, we’re two Black individuals and we’ve done well, we’re successful, and there’s a lot of other folks like us around. This is not Jim Crow, this is not slavery, and to be making those kinds of comparisons is despicable.”

She continued: “Just to make that comparison and not give the world credit on where we’ve come from. It’s Juneteenth! It’s June 19th. We know where we have been. That is not 2025.”

Co-anchoring the midday panel show Outnumbered the following hour, Faulkner – whose solo news show runs head-to-head with The View – upped the ante on her criticism of Goldberg.

“She is ignorant of the facts. I want to try to be kind because my expectation for Whoopi Goldberg is lower,” she declared. “I liked her better when she was playing on, you know, an actress on Star Trek: The Next Generation, where her character was based off this planet in space with aliens. Now she has become one.”

Complaining that Goldberg – who was suspended by ABC in 2022 for claiming the Holocaust was not about race – “says a lot of offensive things,” Faulkner said this was why “no one can watch” The View anymore before taking one final parting shot.

“This goes beyond the pale,” she concluded. “If you can’t see where we are coming from, then you have no hope for where we can go. That’s as racist as anything else I’ve heard.”