The View's blatant conspiracy theory hypocrisy isn't going to get called out

The View is apparently struggling to replace panelist Meghan McCain. "Sources close to the show said that the search has stalled as executives struggle to find a conservative cast member who checks all the right boxes," Politico reported Thursday. What are those boxes? Among them, "They will not consider a Republican who is a denier of the 2020 election results … or is seen as flirting too heavily with fringe conspiracy theories."

But the producers of The View don't seem to have the same level of concern when it comes to the equally troubling left-wing conspiracies pushed on the show.

As recently as Tuesday, rotating guest co-host and Never-Trump Republican Ana Navarro said during a discussion on the upcoming anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, "Look, I felt that Donald Trump had not been legitimately elected. I thought he'd gotten help from the Russians." Apparently it is okay to deny presidential election results on ABC's popular talk show — so long as the year under discussion is 2016.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

This is not new for The View. Longtime co-host Joy Behar has continued to spout versions of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, even long after the Mueller report concluded otherwise, and more recently, special counsel John Durham's probe revealed that the Steele Dossier, a primary source for the collusion accusations, was even flimsier on fact than was previously known. Hillary Clinton herself has claimed more than once that the 2016 election was stolen from her.

It should be harder for those ranging from Navarro to Behar — and all the way up to Clinton — to comfortably wag their fingers at Trump and his supporters for their 2020 election claims, when they have made similar claims about 2016. Such conspiracy theory promotion coming from the left should be considered just as harmful to our civil discourse and republican democracy, but it won't be.

Fortunately for these anti-Trump figures, enough people in the media and political establishment either agree with them about 2016 or are too sympathetic to their political biases to seriously consider holding them accountable. Don't expect any fact-checking on this front.

Jan. 6, 2021, was a dark and embarrassing day for the United States that we won't soon forget. On the one-year anniversary, expect The View hosts and others to remind Americans of the dangers of spreading "misinformation." They should.

They should also stop spreading it.