The hosts of “The View” went into full discussion about Tucker Carlson’s ouster from Fox News first thing on Tuesday morning, and in doing so, host Sunny Hostin wanted to make one thing clear: his firing should not be compared to Don Lemon’s, over on CNN.
On Monday, word of Carlson’s exit from the network came just minutes before “The View” ended, so the women didn’t exactly have time to immediately add it to the Hot Topics discussion. But, moderator Whoopi Goldberg promised that “We’ll talk more about it tomorrow” — right after leading her co-hosts in doing the wave at the table.
On Tuesday, the women once again celebrated Carlson’s ouster, but worried about the fact that Don Lemon was also fired by CNN around the same time. In talking about the latter, the women admitted they were biased, as most of them consider Lemon a friend, but Hostin argued that, objectively, the two firings were very, very different.
“I am stunned. And I hate that people are comparing Tucker’s firing with Don’s firing,” Hostin said. “That’s a false equivalency. False equivalency. And just to put a button on it, Don, yes, said some things that were sexist, and I think ageist. He apologized for them, and received formal training. OK? And he spoke to us about a lot of this.”
Hostin was, of course, referring to the backlash Lemon received earlier this year, after he commented that presidential candidate Nikki Haley is “not in her prime.” In the weeks that followed, Lemon was accused of being a misogynist, which he staunchly denied.
Both Joy Behar and Hostin agreed that, just in their personal interactions with him, Lemon never acted inappropriately.
“I don’t believe, in my experience with him, that he’s a misogynist,” Hostin said. “I think he loves women. He loves his mother, he loved his sister, he loves me, he loves Joy.”
In the end, Behar argued that there is one key difference between Lemon and Carlson.
“He has been on the air for a long time fighting bigotry, whereas Tucker has been fomenting bigotry,” she said. “So that’s a big difference.”