With Friday being Halloween, ABC News's The View tried to give their audience quite a freight by filling their heads with spooky scary conspiracy theories that President Trump was going to steal the upcoming midterm elections and possibly a presidential one. Their potentially inciting rhetoric was spurred on by "very handsome" California Governor Gavin Newsom who was "ringing alarm bells about Trump's plan to send federal election monitors to California on Election Day," according to moderator Joy Behar.
They open the first "Hot Topics" discussion of the show with a soundbite of Newsom hysterically claiming there would no longer be "fair and free" elections in America under Trump:
I really am scared to death about what's going on in this country. I really believe it is code red. It's five-alarm fire. [Transition] We won't have a country. We won't have an election that's fair and free. If we don't stand up. We won't. There will not be a fair and free election. It will be a Putin election. Was it 87 percent or 87.3 percent? That's what Trump wants.
"He's worried. He's worried, and are you as worried about it as he is?" Behar elevated the rhetoric that could get someone killed. "Or is he just going to make more Americans distrust the election process like Trump has been doing since he lost in 2020?"
The first to speak up was pretend independent Sara Haines, who was worried that the rhetoric would lead to "disincentivizing voting in democracy, which is the currency of a democracy." "We don't need to plant seeds (...) So, by planting these seeds, you're already taking a public that's lost trust in everything and saying, your vote doesn't matter. That's the fastest way to affect an election," she lamented.
But she was immediately followed by co-host Sunny Hostin who wanted to really push Newsom's inciting rhetoric. "I see it differently because I think sunlight is the best disinfectant. I think that you need to speak truth to power and you need to expose what may be going on," she argued.
"And so, when Gavin Newsom is saying, 'I am concerned about this,' I think we need to listen!" Hostin shouted. "That's the problem with this country! We don't want to say the quiet part out loud! We don't want to challenge authority! We don't want to challenge authoritarianism! Silence -- there's no place for silence when the democracy is under attack!"
At one point, Behar tried to defend Newsom by blaming Trump; falsely suggesting all the talk of rigged elections started with him:
BEHAR: I just want to say one thing. I don't think Gavin Newsom would be saying this if Donald Trump hasn't thrown in the gauntlet in the first place. It's not like he's doing it to attack.
HAINES: Is it en vogue for every candidate to say, it's probably rigged?
BEHAR: Yeah, but who started this?!
Behar seemed to have the memory of the goldfish and history only began with the 2020 presidential election. In terms of stolen election claims involving Trump, the Democrats started it in 2016 when they and the liberal media falsely claimed Trump was an "illegitimate" president and that Russia "hacked the election."
In fact, The View took part in it. Hostin didn't apologize for here election denialism until 2022 when they were defending Karine Jean-Pierre's appointment to White House press secretary despite being on record as a 2016 election denier. Moderator Whoopi Goldberg defended Jean-Pierre by arguing that she was "doing her part." In 2025 alone, they claimed three times (so far) that Trump stole the 2024 election with the help of Elon Musk.
Back on Friday, Faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin tried to draw a distinction between The View's election conspiracy theories and Newsom's. She insisted that it's "one thing for pundits and for spectators to say 'I'm concerned that there will be free and fair elections again,'" but it was "wholly irresponsible" for Newsom.
Buying into Newsom's inciting rhetoric and amplifying it, fake Republican Ana Navarro tried to compare Trump to the communist dictators of Central America: "Let me just say this. You know, I fled communism. I fled authoritarianism, as you guys know, when I was a child. And the things I'm seeing happen in this country, I never thought I'd see happen in this country."
Navarro was excited by the possibility that Republicans could lose in the midterms because, "There will be oversight. And there will be reining in of his authoritarian tendencies!"
"And some people will be going to jail!" Behar cheered.
While Hostin was shrieking at Farah Griffin about Trump supposedly sending "election monitors" to California, something she didn't have an issue with when they've been deployed against red states, Behar dubbed them "election intimidators" as if they were going to be threatening people who were trying to vote. Another accusation potentially dangerous to someone's life.