Fox News’ Harris Faulkner took multiple swipes at The View after her show overcome the daytime competitor for the first time in January.
Faulkner’s Faulkner Focus competes with The View at 11 a.m. on weekdays and The View has long won the timeslot slot against its competitors, but Faulkner Focus edged out The View in January, averaging nearly 2.552 million viewers compared to View’s 2.508 million. The win is made more significant by the fact that Faulkner Focus has a potentially smaller available audience as it is on cable news. Also important context to these numbers, however, is that The View was in repeats for one of the competing weeks, giving an advantage to competitors.
In an interview with Daily Mail, Faulkner said she watched The View back when the late Barbara Walters led discussions, but the Fox host argued the show is too centered around “vitriol” today.
“Now I don’t really know what the show is, apart from talk, talk, talk; a lot of combativeness. We have lots of guests who feel spicy and passionate about what they say,” she said. “That’s not unique to The View or to any other show that I’ve done. What I do think is unique to them is vitriol. A news director told me early in my career, you don’t have to shout breaking news, and you don’t have to shout the truth.”
Faulkner also knocked the show for being pre-taped and argued it is too “myopically” focused.
“I’ve seen Sunny Hostin read so many apologies on the air recently for the legal exposure of some of the things that she and others have said on the show. That’s dicey,” she said, going on to compare the show to “one of those anti-DOGE meetings or the hearings on Capitol Hill. Democrats right now are apoplectic and they’re shouting and they’re cussing at us.”
Faulkner did offer some praise to View co-host Whoopi Goldberg, saying she appreciated a moment with her when she appeared on The View in 2018 to promote a book. Faulkner explained that Sunny Hostin tried discussing her family and race, but Goldberg steered the conversation away.
“Sunny Hostin came after me, they had put a picture of my biracial children on a huge digital wall behind me, and she took the conversation to race. I knew my kids would be watching. Whoopi goes, ‘You know what, let’s talk about the book.’ And I appreciated that,” she said.
Faulkner called View a “good competitor” and praised her own show as more “nimble” and less rigidly-structured.
“I like a good competitor, it makes me better,” she said. “So in some ways, whatever they have done over there, they’ve put me in a position where I can come out and win even more. So thank you.”
