Elisabeth Hasselbeck surprised The View audience on Wednesday after calling out Democrats as “the party of masks.”
While Whoopi Goldberg felt that “everybody in the nation” wants “tight borders” and want “people who are not good for the country out of the country,” she sounded off on the current state of immigration reform and ICE raids.
“But if you go in and say that’s what you’re going to do, and suddenly you’re sweeping up five year olds and people,” she continued. “I will say in the vaguest form, folks that I work with outside of here have stopped going out to church. They have stopped taking their kids to school, because they’re nervous, and that is not what this should be.”
After Goldberg highlighted how undocumented immigrants still need to pay taxes, Sunny Hostin noted that “most undocumented immigrants pay more taxes than anyone.”
“And we should also mention that they are five times less likely to commit crimes than American citizens,” Hostin said.
Meanwhile Goldberg added, “I guess my point is there have been efforts made by both sides to figure out how to do this. This is not the way, to round people the way that they do.”
Goldberg also piggybacked on a previous statement from Sara Haines about having a fight or flight response if approached by a masked ICE agent, telling her co-hosts, “If somebody comes at me with a mask on, running, talking about, ‘Hey,’ and didn’t show me they were a cop?”
Hasselbeck offered up her take, calling out Democrats as “the party of masks.”
“This is the party of masks. You guys forced masks on everybody in the United States,” referring to the mask mandates during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Like I don’t want to hear, ‘You can’t see my face.’ I just can’t. I love you, but I can’t.”
Audible gasps and disagreement erupted in the audience, while the co-hosts who argued that Hasselbeck’s point is “different” than the topic at hand. Goldberg reiterated that she was talking about “people walking down the street with their kids on their way to school” and becoming the victims of an ICE raid, which Hasselbeck said was “fair.”
Haines chimed in, “The number one thing you hear from immigrants in this country [is] immigrants are very critical of immigration because there are a lot of people who follow all the difficult steps to become a citizen, and they don’t want people skipping the line. You cannot have ICE waiting outside courtrooms when people report following the rules.”
Citing the “human side” of her, Hasselbeck said that her “heart aches,” saying that she thinks “we can extend the department to also monitor and weed out criminals who are coming in here to infiltrate versus those that are coming here with hope to elevate their lives to a place that we just happen to be born here with.”
“I get that,” she added.
Hostin clapped back, “Do you know that the majority of fentanyl brought into this country is by American citizens at actual ports of entry? We are demonizing undocumented immigrants.”
Hasselbeck came to the defense of the current administration, saying that “this administration is succeeding at the border right now,” though “they will make mistakes.”
Goldberg replied, “I’m glad they are succeeding, but they are not succeeding with the American people and that’s the problem.”