If the segment now making the rounds is being described accurately, then The View just did what it always does when reality gets ugly: panic, moralize, and blame Donald Trump for a corporate mess they had no hand in creating.
That’s the part I can’t get over.
According to the transcript circulating on June 20, 2026, Sunny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg reacted to the latest ABC and Disney layoffs by acting like Josh D’Amaro’s cost-cutting wave is somehow the result of Trump intimidating Hollywood into firing people. That is a wild leap. Even by daytime-TV standards, it’s a ridiculous one.
I’m sorry, but Disney does not slash jobs because a talk show panel feels politically threatened. Disney slashes jobs because the numbers are bad, the strategy is shaky, and the company is trying to stop the bleeding.
That’s the story here.
For years, Disney has been running on brand inertia while racking up one creative disappointment after another. The box office has been uneven at best. Streaming has not been the magic fix people pretended it would be. Franchises that used to print money now feel tired, overmanaged, or both. And once a company gets into that rhythm, one hit doesn’t save it. You need consistency. Disney hasn’t had that.
So when layoffs hit ABC and Disney, my first thought is not, “Wow, Trump scared them into it.” My first thought is, “Of course this happened. Look at the state of the business.”
That’s why the reaction from The View, at least as laid out in this transcript, feels so detached from reality. Instead of dealing with the obvious corporate explanation, they go straight to the same political script they always use. If something bad happens, it must be Trump. If audiences tune out, it must be misinformation. If the company makes cuts, it must be fear.
No. Sometimes it’s just failure.
And honestly, that’s what makes this so revealing. The women on that panel are supposed to be reading the room for a living. But they keep missing the most obvious thing in front of them: people are exhausted by this act. They are tired of being told that every business decision, every ratings collapse, every public backlash, every executive panic attack is really part of some grand political persecution narrative.
Sometimes a company makes cuts because it overexpanded. Sometimes executives chop budgets because they misread the market. Sometimes audiences walk because the product stinks.
That explanation may be less dramatic, but it has the advantage of being believable.
I’m not here to defend Josh D’Amaro. Disney’s leadership helped create this disaster, and they deserve the heat. But blaming Trump for Disney’s own instability is the kind of excuse-making that keeps broken institutions broken. It turns every self-inflicted wound into someone else’s crime.
That’s probably comforting on television. It’s also useless.
If this is really how The View chose to frame Disney’s worsening layoffs, then they didn’t just get the story wrong. They exposed how incapable they are of admitting that giant media companies can wreck themselves without any outside villain at all.
And that, more than anything, is why people keep tuning out.
⚠️ 🛠️ print lines 1-220 from memory/2026-06-19.md (agent) failed
