Whoopi Goldberg chastised Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley over her recent comments about the Civil War.
Goldberg slammed Haley after she failed to note slavery as the reason for the war during a town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire, on Dec. 27.
During an episode of “The View” on Jan. 2, Goldberg and her co-hosts discussed the former governor of South Carolina’s comments, and the EGOT winner criticized Haley for not knowing such an important part of American history. After Haley was asked by a man in the audience at the town hall what the cause of the Civil War was, she replied that it was not “an easy question” before claiming it was about the government without mentioning slavery.
“Well, don’t come with an easy question or anything,” said Haley. “I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” she said before asking the man in the audience, “What do you think the cause of the Civil War was?”
The man replied that he wasn’t a candidate for the presidency and wanted to know what Haley thought.
“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are, and I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people,” she continued. “Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.”
After the man replied that he was shocked she didn’t mention slavery, Haley replied, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”
During the discussion on “The View,” Goldberg noted that Haley called the Civil War question a “gotcha question” before saying, “Nikki, I mean, look, it was slavery. Slavery, straight up. Sla-ver-y. Every time people try to change that, we need to change it back.”
Goldberg added that Haley should have known better. “You’re old enough to know better. You read the history books. You know what was happening. One side said, ‘We want the slaves,’ the other side said, ‘we don’t,’ and they went to war. Don’t sugarcoat this! That’s what it was.”
A clip of the episode was shared on X with the caption, “Whoopi wasn’t playing with Nimarata Nikki Haley. #TheView.”
Co-host Joy Behar added that Haley got her answers from “Gone with the Wind.”
“It just shows you who she is,” co-host Sunny Hostin said. “Maya Angelou said, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’”
The ladies from “The View” weren’t the only ones to criticize the Republican presidential candidate over her comments. Former CNN anchor Don Lemon wrote on X that Haley took him “to task” after he made a comment about the 51-year-old not being in her prime last February, yet she “wants grace for using a poor choice of words.”
“Nikki Haley wants grace for using a poor choice of words when, after I misspoke in some comments involving her, she didn’t offer me that same grace, immediately and very publicly took me to task, and then fundraised off of it,” he noted. “However, I’m glad she clarified what she should have said. And, In the spirit of the season, let’s see if her actions match her corrected words moving forward.”
“Selma” director Ava DuVernay also spoke on Haley’s comments during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Politics Nation” with the Rev. Al Sharpton. DuVernay called Haley’s comments “the Nikki Haley debacle.”
“Either she didn’t know that slavery was the reason for the Civil War beginning,” said DuVernay. “Or she doesn’t want to say and wants to kind of continue the lies of omission that have become the hallmark of her party.”
DuVernay added that the Republican Party “is thriving off the idea that you can take knowledge out of the public sphere and defend things that are unconscionable. And so it is not surprising, but it’s certainly part of an ongoing litany of real warnings that I think we should all heed. I mean, they’re basically saying what they want to do and what they will do on what they’ve already done.”
She added that she wasn’t shocked by Haley’s comments and that she hoped it would be a wake-up call for the “dangerous, deranged idea that history doesn’t matter anymore.”
According to The Washington Post, conservatives have pushed back on having “an honest assessment of institutional racism” in recent years and have banned the teaching of critical race theory — a university-level discipline that examines how racism shaped America — in K-12 schools in Tennessee and Florida.
Haley backtracked on her comments after receiving backlash and claimed, “Of course, the Civil War was about slavery.”
Twice-impeached former president Donald Trump is currently the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. However, according to a poll by Saint Anselm College, 30 percent of primary voters are checking the former South Carolina governor’s name.
Haley served as governor of South Carolina from January 2011 to January 2017, the state where white Southerners attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, marking the start of the Civil War.
