‘The View’ from the White House: Forget about the First Amendment 

President Trump has notoriously launched a wide-ranging campaign to punish his media critics. Prominent in his sights are the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and broadcast outlets like the BBC, NBC News and CBS News — all of whom he has sued — and late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, whom he has denounced. 

Now Trump is seeking to punish a new opponent — the long-running ABC daytime talk show “The View.” White House spokesman Taylor Rogers has accused its host, comedian Joy Behar, of being an “irrelevant loser suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Rogers said Behar “should self-reflect on her own jealousy of President Trump’s historic popularity before her show is the next to be pulled off air.”

According to Nielsen, “The View” draws 2.7 million viewers a day, making it a potent political force. Created by the iconic broadcast journalist Barbara Walters, the show is now in its 29th season. It features a multi-generational panel of women, who sit around a long table chewing on the “Hot Topics” of the day.  

The current pack is led by Behar, entertainer Whoopi Goldberg, lawyer Sunny Hostin, television host Sara Haines, television personality Ana Navarro and political strategist Alyssa Farah Griffin. Navarro and Griffin, the two Republicans on the panel, join the liberals in rubbishing Trump at almost every opportunity. Griffin, the daughter of a conservative journalist, worked in the first Trump administration and describes herself as “having been raised in the right-wing media.”

The Trump Federal Communications Commission has been quietly investigating “The View” for months, looking into whether........

© The Hill