Former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro has always been bombastic, loud, opinionated, and not afraid to tell it the way she sees it. She used those skills to rise through the ranks of Westchester County politics, first as a County Court judge in 1990 and then as Westchester DA from 1993 to 2005.
Pirro then joined Fox News as an analysist in 2006 and was awarded her own weekend program in 2011. She remained on the air, but in relative obscurity until the election of President Donald Trump in 2016.
Pirro used her past connections to Trump from Westchester (her ex-husband Al, was the development partner and real estate attorney for Trump on several of his projects in Westchester) to catapult her status among “the deplorables” and Trump voters and Fox news watchers across the county.
Thirteen years after her final term as D.A. and Pirro could probably not be elected in Westchester today. But her status as a Trump surrogate has allowed her to pen a recent book titled “Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy.”
Pirro’s book tour included a stop last week on “The View” a daytime news show where five female hosts discuss the topics of the day and interview guests. “The View” has always had a liberal bend but has always had one host with moderate-conservative viewpoints.
Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar are the top names on “The View,” while Meghan McCain holds the Republican seat on the show. Pirro has been a guest on the show on several occasions, but not since the election of Trump.
Goldberg and Pirro got into a debate, which turned into a heated exchange and ended in the two cursing each other out and Pirro leaving her interview early. Pirro accused Goldberg of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Whoopi responded: “’Listen, I don’t have Trump Derangement. Let me tell you what I have. I’m tired of people starting a conversation with ‘Mexicans are liars and rapists.’ I’m tired of people starting a conversation about this country. There have been a lot of people in office that I didn’t agree with, but I have never ever seen anything like this. I have never seen anybody whip up such hate. I have never seen anybody be so dismissive. Clearly, you don’t watch this show, so you don’t know that I don’t suffer from that.”
After Pirro was kicked off the show, or walked off the set (whoever you want to believe), the two women allegedly had an expletive-filled exchange backstage, with Pirro telling TMZ she was “mistreated” by the show’s hosts and was treated like she was “less than human.” Pirro also told Sean Hannity that she was treated “like a dog” and that Goldberg was “literally spitting at me.”
Goldberg set the record straight, from her vantage point, of what happened backstage, commenting: “Unless you were under a rock, you know all about Jeanine Pirro’s appearance here on the show. Things got hot on the air, which you expect, that happens a lot. But I want to clear up what happened afterwards, because she talked about it on Fox. But she seemed to leave out some key points, and there were a lot of people backstage, and I want to be very clear about what happened. So, there’s a lot of spinning she’s doing, and I can’t do anything about that, but I can tell you what went on.
“She was upset when she got here, because Ana Navaro was here instead of Joy (Behar). And after the segment, which ended when it was supposed to – it was not early, it was not late, it ended when it was supposed to – she then called everybody at the table a name I cannot repeat on TV and said it in front of the audience.
“When I came offstage, I went over there, because I was a little hot, okay? So, I went to calm down. She came off, she could have just passed me, she didn’t need to stop, but she stopped, and put a finger in my face, and said, ‘I’ve done more for victims than you ever will.’ Then I said to her some few choice words I cannot repeat. Yes, I did say it, I did say it, but I did not spit on her, I did not intimidate her, no one chased her out of here saying get out, but she did leave here cursing at the people who booked the show; she cursed at the guys who do the security for the show.
“For 20 years, the show has always had people on with different views, like Newt Gingrich, Corey Lewandowski, Charlotte Pence, Sarah Sanders, Trey Gowdy, Dana Perino, Jenna and Barbara Bush. Jeanine, good luck with your book. I hear it’s number one. I preferred your last book about Robert Durst, but there’s no accounting for taste, you know?” said Goldberg.
Both sides tried to walk back their anger at each other in the days after the confrontation, but also after the publicity from the event went viral, with Whoopi appearing on the morning news-talk shows and Pirro’s book going to number-one on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.
Pirro also said something very interesting, and very true, during the incident and in the days after. “America is better than this. America is a place where you have free speech,” she said. “But what happened yesterday was a microcosm of what is happening in the nation. We need to start talking to each other; we need to start having a conversation.”
But after I heard those words from Pirro, I wondered, how she and Whoopi hurt, not helped, the American conversation and the anger that many of us have on the other side of the political divide. The sad reality of this event is that Pirro and Goldberg are now so used to hearing the cheers and the applause for their own narratives that when they are confronted with opposing viewpoints, they react by trying to shout over each other, or curse at each other.
Pirro got the last word on Fox, saying: “I do want to thank Whoopi and the ladies of ‘The View’ for helping to make my book hit number one. So go out and get a copy if you haven’t already.”
To her credit, when she was a prosecutor, Pirro did many good things for victims of domestic violence and for pushing for hate crime laws. We applaud that Jeanine Pirro.
But today’s Jeanine Pirro is someone else. She, or her surrogates, have pushed a nonsensical narrative that had her as a possible candidate for attorney general and, yes, even Supreme Court justice. At age 67, there was no way Trump was going to nominate Pirro to the Supreme Court, regardless of how close their relationship was 30 years ago.
And with Pirro’s past baggage, which has been brought out in her prior runs for U.S. Senate and NY attorney general about her then-husband’s conviction on tax evasion, her congressional confirmation would likely fail or never happen.
So, while we are happy that Pirro and Goldberg both dialed it backed and smiled before the cameras in the days after their confrontation to tell us that all is forgiven, we wonder, and fear if this is another example of our country losing its cool.
The lesson learned from the cursing and finger pointing and losing respect for each other is that we all need to try to dial it back before it happens, before someone gets hurt… or worse.
Or another lesson could be for the writer of this story: Was I duped by Pirro and Goldberg for their public relations benefit? Did I just help their TV show and book sales? Probably, but its summer time and I couldn’t resist.
