“The View”'s Alyssa Farah Griffin rolls eyes at Joy Behar during tense fight on air, after Whoopi Goldberg warns: 'Be nice'

Face cream visionary and cherry sweater-wearing fashion icon Alyssa Farah Griffin reached a breaking point on The View, after cohost Joy Behar shaded her on air during a particularly tense verbal clash about hate speech on social media.

During the first half of Wednesday's episode of the talk show — the live broadcast of which was partially interrupted by breaking news coverage of the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires, but later debuted in full on Hulu — all five cohosts participated in a heated conversation amid news that Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta would ease up on elements of its fact-checking system.

After Sunny Hostin and Griffin engaged in a light disagreement that ended with Hostin urging Griffin to allow her to finish expressing her thoughts on hate speech vs. free speech, the show went to a commercial break. When the program returned, moderator Whoopi Goldberg prompted Hostin to continue her thought.

"There's a difference between free speech and hate speech. We know that. Free speech, I welcome, I think everyone welcomes. It's your constitutional right. When you start delving into hate speech, which is what is happening all over social media, there's a problem with that, when you start delving into misinformation and disinformation, there's a problem with that," Hostin, 56, continued, before speculating that Meta's intention to end a fact-checking program "is about President Trump going back into the White House."

Griffin, 35, who previously worked under Donald Trump, observed that, "Of course there's pressure because Trump is coming into office, but I do think there's a cultural and societal desire to be able to talk about things openly." She said that "liberals used to be the one who were pro-free speech. The famous saying goes, 'I disagree with what you're saying but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.'"

Goldberg, 69, cut in to assert, "I will not defend to the death your right to call me..." before an exasperated Griffin interrupted her. "Guys, I can't finish a sentence here," before turning to Hostin to complain that "she has talked for 20 minutes."

This didn't sit well with Goldberg, who raised her finger toward Griffin and said, "Be nice, she didn't talk for 20 minutes," before telling Griffin to continue.

Related: The View will now air 7 days a week as show announces new entertainment-focused The Weekend View streaming series

"Okay, I'm trying to make the point that hate speech, something that incites violence, is not legally ever protected under the First Amendment. My ability to say a housewife is a household object, I can say that, it can offend you. I don't agree with it, but you absolutely, under the First Amendment, have a right to say it, and the fact that we're policing speech because it makes people uncomfortable or they don't like it or it offends them..." Griffin said, as Goldberg again cut in to speak.

"If somebody decides, as they do often on these social media places, to call me a..." she said, as the camera cut away from her and the audio dropped while she said a profane word. (Entertainment Weekly has reached out to a representative for The View for comment.)

"Oh, don't even say the word," 82-year-old Behar said, before Griffin added that she gets "death threats on social media" in a similar fashion.

"If we're going to have this conversation, then let's have it, if we're gonna do that, we have to do that," Goldberg said while the audience cheered, after she spoke the censored word. "There are certain things we all agree, boy, you shouldn't be saying that. That is not curbing your free speech, it's asking [somebody] to respect the fact that people don't want to hear that word when it has to do with them."

Later, Behar, who is Italian, brought up old, insensitive cartoons that mocked her culture as forming the basis for her opinion on the topic.

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"Everybody was a pizza maker. As a child I felt that that was offensive to me, so, I understand, I have empathy for people who don't like it when you are making fun of their group in a nasty way," she said. "The people who are doing this are not from minority groups, they're from majority groups."

Griffin again vocalized her impassioned stance on the issue, explaining that "every person at the table gets hate speech directed at them," which clearly annoyed Behar. "I guess no one gets to finish a sentence here anymore. Okay," Behar said as she slapped her cue cards down on the Hot Topics table, leading to Goldberg stifling a laugh as she buried her face in her hands.

Sara Haines attempted to defend Griffin, saying, "I think the point Alyssa is making here..." before Behar cut her off, too. "Well, don't speak for her, she speaks very well for herself," Behar quipped, as the audience lightly gasped and Griffin rolled her eyes before snapping back.

"We all act like we're for free speech when it's the things we like," Griffin said, though Goldberg noted, "That is not true."

The pair then debated the contemporary state of comedy, with Griffin observing that "comedy needs to push limits," though Goldberg slightly disagreed: "Comedy does push limits, but be smarter in your comedy," the Oscar-winning actress said. "You don't sneed to offend me to be funny, I don't need to offend you to be funny."

Griffin interrupted her once again, and later continued to stress that she feels "there's never been a social media platform that's existed where you can't call people names."

Hostin again speculated that the uptick in the acceptance of hate speech online is likely due to the rise of Trump — an idea Griffin repeatedly rebuked.

"There's never been a social media platform that's existed where you can't call people names," Griffin said. "It's not because Donald Trump got elected, now you can call people names on social media, that's just not true."

Goldberg finally stepped in to throw the show to another commercial break, before the group welcomed actress Glenn Close to the table for an interview.

In recent months, Griffin has engaged in several on-air clashes with her cohosts, including Hostin, with whom she disagreed with several times over analysis of the 2024 presidential election.

Related: The View cohost Sunny Hostin's husband, Dr. Emmanuel 'Manny' Hostin, accused of insurance fraud in federal lawsuit

During a December interview on the show's Behind the Table podcast, Griffin said that she's felt herself changing emotionally as she began a second cycle of IVF treatments.

"I didn't cry [during the first cycle], I didn't have meltdowns, I didn't feel hormonal swings. I think I got kind of cocky, because, the second cycle, I've been a wreck," she continued. "I've not felt myself, I've been tired, I've been emotional, you feel uncomfortable in your body. I just wanted to mention it because, from someone who is surprised by how hard it was, it's because all the stories of this that we hear is usually women on the other side, like, 'Here's my baby and, oh, real quick, it was kind of hard to get here.'"

The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET/10 a.m. PT on ABC. Watch Behar and Griffin clash in the video at the top of this post.

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