Sara Haines Reveals How ‘The View’ Changed Her Political Opinions

The “Hot Topics” continued on Friday’s (October 16) edition of The View, with Sunny Hostin subbing in as moderator (with Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Alyssa Farah Griffin all out of commission) and Raven-Symoné serving as guest cohost alongside Sara Haines and Ana Navarro. The first order of business for the panelists to discuss was Joe Rogan‘s interview with Michael Douglas, in which he explained his prior support of Donald Trump and disappointment over his engagement in the Iran War.

While Hostin saved her pointed message to Rogan for last, she invited the others to reveal if they, too, have ever had a major change of heart in their political beliefs.

“Uh, hello?!” Navarro, a registered Republican who openly opposes Trump and MAGA, said to start. She then explained, “I think this idea that if you’re born a Republican, you have to die a Republican, or if you’re born a Democrat, you have to die a Democrat is intellectually lazy, because that means that when you’re looking at candidates and when you’re looking at races, the only thing that matters is whether it’s an R or a D behind the name. So I was like that. I would vote down the ballot Republican … since I became a citizen. 2016 was the first time that I voted for a Democrat. I voted for Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. Yeah, and it was a hard thing to do, but it liberated me because I no longer feel chained to one party or another, and it’s forced me to look at what candidates stand for.”

Navarro then revealed a very personal reason why she updated her policy position on at least one issue, saying, “My cousin’s son was killed at Pulse [nightclub], and now you better believe that I look at what the candidates’ gun policies are. So I do think that evolving means living, and living means evolving.”

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Haines then weighed in and revealed that not only have some of her views changed, but her time on The View helped shape some of her new stances. “This show has made me more liberal and more conservative on different issues. One would be I’ve become more liberal on immigration. Immigration was one of my conservative takes because I looked at it unemotionally: ‘We’ve got to fix a system that’s been broken for decades. We have these sanctuary cities where the rules apply here, but not here.’ And it didn’t make sense to my logical mind. Watching what’s happened and how far it can be taken with ICE and the kind of grabbing people out of their homes… it has forced me to swing almost to the other way completely on that.”

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Symoné then offered a perhaps surprising bit of support for Donald Trump’s health secretary, RFK. Jr., and his “MAHA” movement, saying, “The things that he’s been saying about food — meaning almost 50% of the food industry has pledged to remove synthetic food dyes — yes. Thank you. They also released a Surgeon General’s warning on the harms of screen use. Yes, thank you. Getting the bad things out of our food, which actually don’t get me started. You eat something, our body is a big old science experiment. It then turns into dementia, diabetes, illness, disease, dis-ease of the body. And so with that, you’ve got to get past the person and just look at the policies. Let’s vote on policies and not the person themselves.”

Hostin closed out the segment with a biting response to Rogan, saying, “I just want to say this because Joe Rogan has 74.=2 million followers across several platforms, and The Joe Rogan Experience was the number-one podcast in the United States. He signed a $250 million deal for that podcast. Yeah, I’m not sure why he can’t afford a fact-checker.” She then went on to respond to the comments he made in the clip, one by one, before saying, “You’re welcome, Joe.”

The View, weekdays, 11a/10c, ABC