By Isaac White

Copyright newsbusters

ABC’s The View
September 22, 2025
11:02:00 a.m. Eastern

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Now, look. Did y’all really think we weren’t going to talk about Jimmy Kimmel? I mean, have you watched the show over the last 29 seasons? So you know no one silences us. And to all my friends in Italy who reached out, you have to know, it’s okay, we’re still here. We’re still broadcasting. And when the news broke last week about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, we took a breath to see if Jimmy was going to say anything about it first. We did the same thing with Stephen Colbert. Then our show was on tape on Friday. But we are live here today, and we’re getting into it now. Okay? [APPLAUSE] Now, to be clear, you cannot like—now, I want to make sure I got this right. To be clear, you cannot like a show and it can go off the air. Someone can say something they shouldn’t and get taken off the air. But the government cannot — cannot apply pressure to force someone to be silenced. And you may be surprised to see who agrees with us at this table. Because it blew us away. Take a look.

[Cuts to video]

KRISTEN WELKER [on NBC’s Meet the Press, 09/21/25]: Do you believe that Brendan Carr’s comments were appropriate?

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY) [on NBC’s Meet the Press, 09/21/25]: Absolutely inappropriate. [SCREEN WIPE] The government has got no business in it and the FCC was wrong to weigh in and I will fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech, I will fight.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT) [on ABC’s This Week, 09/21/25]: We are quickly turning into a banana republic. The President of the United States is now employing the full power of the federal government, the FCC, the Department of Justice, in order to punish, lock up, take down off the air all of his political enemies. [SCREEN WIPE] I think what Brendan Carr has done at the FCC is illegal and unconstitutional.

SEN: TED CRUZ (R-TX) [on The Verdict with Ted Cruz, 09/19/25]: He says, “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.” And I got to that say that’s right out of Goodfellas. That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, “Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it. [SCREEN WIPE] I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business. We should denounce it.

11:05:30 a.m. Eastern

GOLDBERG: No, it’s not up to Brendan Carr. It is not up to him. I don’t understand how you are the man in charge of the nation and you still don’t understand how the First Amendment works. Do you want to remind him? Because you are the lawyer. Please do.

SUNNY HOSTIN: I would like to. Thank you, Whoopi. You know, freedom of speech undergirds our democracy, and our Founders were very, very clear on that. Our Founders drafted the First Amendment specifically to protect the rights of citizens to criticize the government. Thomas Jefferson, in particular, said the citizens must be able to criticize officials because “they will try to impose their thinking and modes of thinking on others,” unquote. And the Supreme Court time and time again has reinforced its support for the law of the land, the First Amendment. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In 1929, I remember being in law school — not in 1929 —

SARA HAINES: You look amazing.

HOSTIN: — thank you. I remember being in law school in 1991 and my constitutional law professor said that, in 1929, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the greats — one of the greats — said that, “We must protect the freedom to express the thought we hate.” Think about that. “We must protect the freedom to express the thought we hate.” And so, Justice Sotomayor said last week that, “Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech, in some way I think to myself, ‘That law school failed.’” Well, my law school, Notre Dame, didn’t fail. I know very well what the freedom of speech means. I know all of you know very much what the freedom of speech means. And the President of the United States should know what the freedom of speech means.