‘The View’: Whoopi Goldberg Gives Stark Warning to Speaker Mike Johnson About ‘Tarred & Feathered’ Comments

Amanda Bell June 11, 2025, 12:14 pm

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The cohosts of The View continued to talk about Donald Trump‘s decision to send military troops into California amid anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles — this time, narrowing in on key Republicans’ public responses to questions about it. Not only did the subject get a bit testy between the panelists at certain points, but Whoopi Goldberg was also incensed enough about a certain turn of phrase by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson that she delivered a stern warning to him about it.

First, the group reviewed footage of the reactions to Trump’s deployment of National Guard members and Marines to the city, including California Governor Gavin Newsom calling it the move of an “authoritarian regime” and suggesting other cities will be next, and Johnson’s reaction to Newsom’s statement: “I’m not going to give you legal analysis on whether Newsom should be arrested, but he ought to be tarred and feathered. I’ll say that.” Johnson also sidestepped questions about whether it’s hypocritical of the administration to target these demonstrators after pardoning the insurrectionists of January 6th.

“He doesn’t have a distinction, and that’s why he’s slowly walking away from the mic,” Sara Haines said first. “There’s no consistency here.” She also criticized the administration for wasting money on the deployment of troops. “We’ve talked about DOGE for months. We’ve been talking about the careless hacksaw that’s been taken to the government aid, cancer research, school lunches, you name it, all on the chopping block, and yet we’ll spend $136 million to deploy our military domestically without any coordination of the state government…. The insanity of all of this playing out is a waste of money.”

“Tarring and feathering, by the way, is a medieval punishment and torture,” she continued before Goldberg interrupted, “I’m sorry, that’s what they did to Black people all throughout the United States. So just an FYI to Mike Johnson. That is probably not the direction you want to go right now.”

Soon after, Alyssa Farah Griffin warned that Trump’s political strategy might be “baiting liberals” into “adopting rhetoric that he thinks is going to be divisive and damaging ahead of the midterms,” such as “defund ICE” and “defund the police.”

However, Sunny Hostin disagreed and said it was purely a “power grab” by Trump. “Trump is not doing this just for optics. I think that this is a test case so that he can dismantle some of our institutions. I think it’s a power grab. I think he is trying to use the might of the military to suppress people’s rights. I think that is very clear. When you use the military against your own citizens, that is a sign of fascism. That is just the truth. We’ve seen it in history over and over and over again,” she said.

'The View': Sunny Hostin Calls Trump's L.A. Troop Deployment a 'Test Run' for Other Cities

Griffin returned to reiterate her point, though, warning, “The ICE agents, those are non-partisan actors, for the most part, who signed up for jobs, have served under multiple administrations. They did not necessarily sign up to be doing this, and they’re following an order of the Commander in Chief.”

Goldberg was once again shaken by the turn of phrase at hand, this time by Griffin, and said, “Think back, ya’ll. Where have you heard that before: ‘I’m just following orders by my commander in chief?'”

When Griffin tried to respond, Goldberg didn’t allow it at first and said, “No, no, because this is my point: We don’t want to be what they were. Do you understand what I’m saying? We don’t.” She later added, “We do have to be careful, because when we say things like, ‘just following orders,’ it leads to that.” Griffin then got her turn to speak again and said that she believes half of the troops are probably on the same political leanings as Democrats and feel uncomfortable with the deployment.

The View, Weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC