“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg apologized to Turning Point USA on the air during Thursday’s ABC broadcast for alleging that the conservative student group invited neo-Nazis into its conference in Florida last weekend.
“You know, in Monday’s conversation about Turning Point USA, I put the young people at the conference in the same category as the protesters outside,” Goldberg said during Thursday’s broadcast.
“I don’t like it when people make assumptions about me, and it’s not any better when I make assumptions about other people, which I did. I’m my bad. I’m sorry.”
The apology came a day after Goldberg’s co-host on “The View,” Sara Haines, also read a statement apologizing to TPUSA.
“On Monday we talked about the fact that there were openly neo-Nazi demonstrators outside the Florida Student Action Summit of the Turning Point USA group,” Haines said on Wednesday’s broadcast.
“We want to make clear that these demonstrators were gathered outside the event and that they were not invited or endorsed by Turning Point USA.”
“A Turning Point USA spokesman said the group ‘100 percent condemns those ideologies’ and said Turning Point USA security tried to remove the neo-Nazis from the area but could not because they were on public property,” Haines said.
“Also, Turning Point USA wanted us to clarify that this was a Turning Point USA Summit, and not a Republican Party event. So, we apologize for anything we said that may have been unclear on these points.”
TPUSA told Fox News that it demanded an apology from Goldberg personally since she was the one who accused the group of being “complicit” because it “let them in” and “you knew what they were.”
During Monday’s broadcast, Haines then read TPUSA’s condemnation of the neo-Nazis.
“The conservative group Turning Point USA has condemned the group of neo-Nazis and said they have nothing to do with the organization,” Haines said.
Goldberg then replied: “But you let them in. You let them in and you knew what they were, so you were complicit.”
Later in the broadcast, Goldberg clarified her earlier remarks.
“Let me make a quick clarification about the neo-Nazis at the Turning Point event,” Goldberg said on Monday during a segment discussing the images of demonstrators waving Nazi flags outside the assembly hall in Tampa.
“They were outside protesters. My point was more metaphorical. You embraced them at your thing, I felt.”
Goldberg’s co-host, Joy Behar, also chimed in, criticizing TPUSA.
“Neo-Nazis were out there in the front of the conference with anti-Semitic slurs and, you know, the Nazi swastika and a picture of a so-called Jewish person with exaggerated features, just like Goebbels did during the Third Reich. It’s the same thing, right out of that same playbook,” Behar said.
TPUSA responded by sending a cease-and-desist letter to ABC, accusing “The View” co-hosts of making “defamatory statements.”
The letter prompted the on-air apologies this week.
nypost.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism