“The View ”audience gasps as cohost asks ‘isn’t something better than nothing?’ over Trump’s $5,000 ‘baby bonus’

Key Points

• The View cohosts reacted to Donald Trump’s potential plan to increase birthrates.

• Conservative star Alyssa Farah Griffin asked, “Isn’t something better than nothing?”

• The show’s studio audience audibly jeered over the former Trump associate’s words.

The View cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin‘s assessment of former boss Donald Trump‘s potential plan to raise the American birth rate elicited an audible gasp from the talk show’s live studio audience.

The moment (watch in the video above) came during a Hot Topics discussion Wednesday morning, after moderator Whoopi Goldberg harshly criticized the administration’s possible policy that would reportedly offer “a $5,000 cash ‘baby bonus’ to every American mother after delivery,” per the New York Times.

“I am incredibly insulted by this, because, clearly, they don’t know how women’s bodies work, and they don’t know what it costs to raise a child or just have a child,” the 69-year-old EGOT-winning actress said, before pointing out child-specific programs that the administration has cut. “That $5,000? I don’t know what $5,000 is supposed to do.”

Panelist Sara Haines highlighted that there’s a “deeper problem” to address, in that “we don’t have paid family leave in this country or subsidized childcare” — both things she felt should be addressed before giving people $5,000 to have another child.

She also cited research that put a “conservative estimate” for money required to raise a child at $16,000.

“I’m one of those people that I feel the earth is overpopulated. They want more babies because it affects not only the workforce, but paying into entitlement programs,” she said, estimating that artificial intelligence is a bigger problem in that regard, because she thinks it will “bankrupt social services” in the long run.

Goldberg closed out the conversation by again lamenting “things that this administration has slashed,” which she said made her feel “insulted by that amount of money” potentially offered to new parents.

“$5,000 sounds like a lot of money, but if you can’t pay your rent, if you can’t pay for your after-school programs for your kids…” Goldberg said, before Griffin asked, “But, isn’t something better than nothing, I guess?”

The audience audibly gasped at the 35-year-old’s assessment, before she added, “I feel like if [Joe] Biden proposed this, we’d all be saying it’s groundbreaking.”

Goldberg quickly shut Griffin down, again pointing out that there have been recent cuts to programs intended to curb online abuse as well as for schools and food banks across the country.

“I don’t like the idea that somebody is saying I’m going to pay you to have more kids,” Goldberg said, later explaining, “If you want people to have children, you have to not scare them by cutting all these programs that they may need.”

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The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET/10 a.m. PT on ABC. Watch the audience gasp over Griffin’s comment in the video at the top of this post.

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