A bizarre video of disgraced comedienne Roseanne Barr left co-hosts of “The View” questioning the former television star’s mental stability but also expressing sympathy for her.
Barr had her show pulled from the air earlier this year after authoring a racist tweet about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and has refused to stop talking about it. A short video uploaded to her YouTube page Friday shows Barr, who’s reportedly in talks to land her own talk show, loudly defending her actions.
“I’m trying to talk about Iran. I’m trying to talk about — Valerie Jarrett wrote the Iran deal,” she shouts at a man off camera. “That’s what the tweet was about.”
“I thought the b—h was white!!!,” Barr added.
Roseanne Barr "Defends" Valerie Jarrett Comments | The View
ROSEANNE "DEFENDS" VALERIE JARRETT COMMENTS: Roseanne Barr rages about ex-Obama official in a new video, saying again she thought Valerie Jarrett was white. We react to the outburst. abcn.ws/2CcjBVI
Posted by The View on Friday, July 20, 2018
Co-host Paula Faris said the footage proved Barr was “…clearly unraveling” adding that the people around her are likely enabling her behavior. Longtime host Whoopi Goldberg chimed in, wondering if the video was just a publicity stunt to get folks talking. Her co-host Sunny Hostin didn’t think so.
“It just made me sad,” she said. “I saw someone that is perhaps unraveling, someone who isn’t surrounded by people that she needs. Someone needs to help her — notwithstanding what she tweeted, notwithstanding what she said. This is someone in distress.”
“It just saddens me because she was one of the biggest television stars, what 10-15 years ago?” Hostin continued.
Guest co-host Tara Setmayer wasn’t as empathetic, noting that Barr has been controversial and “uncouth” for some time now. The conservative commented asked at what point do we stop exploiting “mentally unstable” people for commercial gain.
“[Barr] wouldn’t even be relevant if it weren’t for the age of Donald Trump,” Setmayer said, arguing that Trump’s incendiary rhetoric has emboldened racists to “spew the ilk” spewed by Barr in the video. “It’s a lot of ugliness going on there — not only the mental health side of it, but just the pure racism of it all.”
Goldberg said she hoped Barr was just trying to “dupe” folks with video, saying she hoped it was just a joke.
“I hope this is just something she’s done to see how many people would pick up on it,” she said. “‘Cuz I would be very sad if her team allowed her to put that up there and say ‘look, this doesn’t really help anything.'”
Watch more in the clip above.
