Exclusive: Alyssa Farah Griffin Warns ‘Rage and Retribution’ Will Define Second Trump Term

As White House communications director during perhaps the most consequential time of Donald Trump’s presidency, Alyssa Farah Griffin witnessed the end of Trump’s administration firsthand. Now, as a co-host of The View and a CNN contributor, she has emerged as one of his most prominent critics.

Farah Griffin resigned from the Trump White House in December 2020, weeks after he lost the election to President Joe Biden. She began speaking out against him after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, and now, from her perch in the so-called Republican chair of The View, she’s warning that a second Trump term would be a disaster. On this week’s edition of Mediaite’s Press Club, now airing on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel, Farah Griffin said “rage and retribution will be the governing principles” of a second Trump term if he’s re-elected to the White House.

She spoke at length about what she saw in the Trump administration the first time around, including one meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr in which Trump mused about executing a White House staffer accused of leaking a story.

“There were other instances where he talked about executing people,” Farah Griffin told Mediate editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin. “How do you rationalize that is a person fit in sound judgment to be president of the United States?”

Farah Griffin also spoke about the enduring success of The View, her evolving views of Trump and his movement, what she makes of political figures like Nikki Haley — who endorsed Trump after declaring him unfit for the White House — and where she thinks the election campaign is headed.

Mediaite’s Press Club airs in full Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius XM’s POTUS Channel 124. You can also subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

I can imagine it’s quite daunting coming out onto the set of The View. Do you get nervous being in that seat?

I definitely had nerves when I started, and especially when I was guest hosting because you don’t yet have the relationship with the other women at the table, and you’re the only right-of-center viewpoint. Now it’s largely gone away.

And I’ll be honest, we have a live studio audience of about 150 people. And there’s something about when our song starts to play, our walk-out song, and then the audience cheers. You feel pumped, I feel ready. I think it’s like the hype song that an athlete would have or whatever. I’m like, I’m ready to go. But there are days that it could be more subject matter related that I’m not nervous, just more aware of points that I want to make, what the pushback is going to be, and that kind of thing.

Can the audience be fickle? Can you lose them?

Well, I mean, it’s a Manhattan audience. So, when I do get applause, I’m like, yes finally, because politically they’re not as inclined to identify with my side. But honestly, they’re super respectful. They’re nice. I find in the more pop culture driven segments, I get a little more applause there.

There have been a few shows — this is very rare because we get an energized audience and a lot of them are diehard View viewers — but there have been a few where they may be there specifically for a celebrity guest, and you could feel that they’re not that interested in our topic, and you do feed off the energy of the crowd, but that’s super rare. There was one show that we came back for after the Trump conviction came down because on Fridays in the summer, we pre-tape the Friday show, and there’s just no way you can’t not have commented on this huge news. And we were able to get a full audience hours beforehand just announcing that we’d be there live so that’s a cool part of the show.

You mentioned the relationships with your co-hosts, because I know that that’s been an issue on The View in years past, it can sometimes get contentious, particularly in the so-called conservative seat. How do you get along with everyone?

Yeah. Surprisingly well. I’m the youngest host and I’m the Republican host. It took time. I think part of doing a really long period trying to fill my seat was to see who was building chemistry over time with the other hosts. But for me, what I think made me know it was a job I wanted to do is I’ve never struggled to have friends who have different political views. I talk on the show a lot, my best friend Alex is a Democrat, lifelong. Always has been. We talk about everything, and it’s never gotten in the way of our friendship. So for me, I’m very comfortable fundamentally disagreeing with people on certain things, but then leaving it there, leaving it on the table we say. It’s funny, there was a few days that Joy was out a while back and I, in the morning meeting, I was like, I miss Joy. And I never thought I would have said, I miss Joy Behar! But that is where we are.

That’s where we are. Do you ever speak with your predecessor Meghan McCain about the job?

No. So, I didn’t really know Meghan. I’m close with Abby Huntsman, so she was a big sounding board when I first started on how to navigate the sea. And I think ideologically, she and I are pretty similar. So, early in my career, people knew me as, honestly, in the far right, I was the first spokeswoman for the Freedom Caucus. I worked for Pence. I worked for Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan. I became more moderate in my time, from DOD even to the end of the Trump administration. So I see myself honestly as a moderate Republican, more in the vein of a Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan kind of era.

So in that regard, I think Abby and I had a lot in common. So we were able to talk, like how do you navigate that, also when you want to represent Republican viewpoints, but you are genuinely out of step with this moment of the party. And she’s lovely. She was just a good person.

What tips did she have?

Honestly, building the relationships with the co-hosts because as long as there’s mutual respect as humans, I think that you can be given the space to give your viewpoint. That doesn’t mean there aren’t days that I’ve been interrupted 20 times and that kind of thing. But, that was her big push is just get to know them on a human level and they’ll be a lot more willing to let you express your viewpoints.

I saw Meghan McCain got upset with you guys recently because Ana Navarro mentioned her on air.

Well, to be honest, I didn’t know what Ana was referring to. I think in the clip I was like, wait, what? I was convinced I was like, who here are we saying this about? But, no, I don’t know that I saw her response on that. I remember in the show being confused by it, but, listen, this show has had, I want to say, 26 hosts — no, more than that because it’s our 26th season. It’s had so many different women over the years. All different backgrounds, ages, ideological viewpoints. It’s cool when I get to meet some of them, like Elisabeth Hasselbeck was lovely to me. We’ve recently had Candace Cameron Bure on, so just seeing how different people navigated it in different periods, like Elizabeth had it hard, like, you know, going to war with Rosie over the war in Iraq during the Bush administration. That’s a tough time to fill that seat.

I think there was a famous hot mic moment where she stormed off the set.

I live in constant fear of hot mic moments.

I can imagine. That one was brutal.

It was a different era, to be honest, because I’ve never seen anything like that when I’ve been at the show and for all of kind of the drama and intrigue around it, usually the most heated moments are what you see on air. We were just all at the Daytime — well, a few of the hosts and the crew were at the Daytime Emmys in LA, and we hung out the whole time. It was a cool trip, even though we were robbed.

It’s obviously been a tough couple of years for the media industry. But at The View, the ratings have been incredible. 

We’re number one in daytime.

Why do you think the show is so popular?

And we also do really well in the demo, which is the biggest challenge.

Which, for daytime TV, is hard.

Yeah, exactly. I think it’s a lot of things. The show’s iconic, people tune in for the weird, funny viral moments that are bound to happen. Like what off the wall thing might Joy or Whoopi do or say that day. But I also think for a lot of people who are sick of the 24 hour news cycle, but want to know what their friends are talking about, it’s a good place to get that. We’re going to do a little bit of politics and hot topics, but then we’re going to talk about what the big pop culture stories of the day are, or the trends in new media, whatever it might be.

So I think it gives people a little bit of everything. I thought about this when we were at the Emmys, when I was comparing us to the other shows, which are all amazing. Like Kelly Clarkson, I didn’t ever think I’d be in the same room as her. But how unique The View is. We took live coverage the day after October 7th from Israel with one of our ABC correspondents who was there where he starts coming within proximity to gunfire and had to duck and cover. And we’re covering that live on air on our show. Then the next segment you might have J.Lo on, then it might be me getting slimed, you just don’t know what you’re going to get. And no one else on TV does what we do. For better or worse sometimes.

Being able to tune into something that surprises you is vital for television. When shows start to do the same thing over and over again, that’s when the ratings start to go down, because it’s just not interesting.

And to be honest, I’m keenly aware that we have people who hate-watch us. But I’ll take the viewership. And with a table where you have people from different backgrounds, different ages, different generations and viewpoints, there’s something for everyone at the table. Unless you’re diehard MAGA, you might not find anything.

I wanted to talk about your time in the Trump administration, where you served as communications director, and previously spokesperson at the Pentagon and Vice President Mike Pence. Towards the end, you resigned. Things got a little crazy. For those who don’t know, could you tell us about your time there and what led to your exit?

I was honored to have had three roles in the Trump administration. I’ve been open, I didn’t vote for him in 2016. I kept trying to get there and things he would say, issues around his character were tough for me. I ultimately wrote someone in, and in retrospect, I wrote Mike Pence and Paul Ryan, what a random pairing looking back.

But I ended up going into work for him when Mike Pence’s team recruited me. Mike Pence was very much a conservative of the old guard. He was someone I admired when he was in the Republican Study Committee in the House. And, ideologically, a number of issues were very, very aligned. I got to travel the world with him, meet with countless heads of state, everyone from Vladimir Putin to President Moon of South Korea, and so on. And, I feel like I learned a lot about public service in that role, coming from a hyperpartisan background in the Freedom Caucus, where it was a lot more about driving headlines, fighting the other side. With him, it changed the way I viewed time in government where it was genuinely like we are as much the vice president of the Democrats who didn’t vote for us as we are Republicans.

And then DOD solidified that for me. You didn’t know people’s political stripes. It was mission oriented. It was one team, one fight. And I was very lucky to work under Chairman Milley and Mark Esper, who I greatly admire and have great relationships with since I left. And then I made the decision, which I had previously declined, to work specifically in Trump’s West Wing. At the height of Covid, Mark Meadows, my old boss, had gone in to be Chief of Staff and had recruited me over. And I grapple with this, I can’t tell if it was hubris or naivete that I was like, I think I can go in and help with the Covid comms response. And I did, and I got there and I saw just what was so many levels of disorganization and just structurally, it was so different from the Pentagon or Pence world or anywhere else that I worked, and there were incredible people there, and even those who may disagree with me now and we may not see eye to eye, there were a lot of people I was honored to work with, as well as the outside public servants like the Covid doctors and the military, folks who worked on Operation Warp Speed. But it was a really chaotic period.

And there was about six months that I was there that I genuinely bought into who Trump wants to be seen as, I genuinely had affection for him. I knew he was chaotic, but I thought that there might be a method to the madness. I wanted to believe in him and I started to. And it started to change for me mid-summer, we’re in the height of Covid, and then George Floyd’s murder takes place. And I, like a lot of Americans, I hated seeing the vandalism, the violence. But I also recognized this is a critical moment in our country that required leadership to grapple with issues around race that we just had not in a real way.

And it was when he put out this statement — “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” — and our jaws dropped in the press shop, even people who are still with him today. And, I went in several times to his dining room off the oval and was like, sir, you have to walk this back. And I even tried to coach him through. I was like you could suggest that what you meant to say is looting ultimately leads to violence. We don’t want violence. We want peace. And he said that’s not what I meant. And it was in that moment that I was like he doesn’t have this ability and the character to rise to leadership when it calls for it. And he’s so easily —

You think he meant, or you know he meant, police should shoot —

I’m confident that he meant, yes, if you’re looting, you should be shot. And it just showed for me such a stunning lack of character. And I also saw that he could so easily be swayed from initially, maybe having the right instinct to those in sort of the right-wing media echo chamber that he listened to taking him a totally different direction because he gave remarks, I believe there were at NASA, Cape Canaveral, right after George Floyd’s murder, that were the right tone. They didn’t get a lot of pickup, but he so rapidly then switched the other direction.

And it made me see, leadership is not being able to be swayed by the loudest voices in media. It’s not having just a fundamental lack of character. I recognized by that point I didn’t want him to win again. I wasn’t actively going to speak out against him or work against him. I was going to focus on the Covid task force.

And then come the election night, I was disillusioned. He lost. It was what I expected. It was very close to what our internal polling had showed. And I resigned, I think three weeks after the race was called.

My only regret was that I didn’t resign immediately. But I just was not comfortable with the lies being told. And I think that they’re insidious. I think it’s why so many people now believe the election was stolen and it fundamentally undercut our institutions. And by the way, he would absolutely do it again if he loses to Biden this time. The notion that he’s going to concede is absolutely absurd.

You had some on air interviews that you did when you were still working at the White House, and one on Fox after you had left, where you didn’t embrace the election fraud stuff, but you spoke about how if people don’t want a rigged election they need to go out and vote in Georgia. Do you look back and regret —

There was a specific phrase I used where I said something about, we know there were irregularities.

Irregularities, right.

And I honestly wish I hadn’t use that phraseology. What I will defend at the time is we were still in the midst of a lot of court cases going through. There was a legitimate period where the RNC had every right to challenge in the states and exhaust legal options.

But then when you get knocked down in over 60 court cases, there’s no legal remedy, there’s no legitimate claims. And I always point now to this Pennsylvania audit they did, it got more votes for Joe Biden once they went back and counted. So I actually do regret that language because you see now how much it’s taken hold. And people can extrapolate something maybe small and then take it to mean that there’s a reason you should distrust the whole system.

At what point did you realize that those election lies that Trump was pushing were dangerous and were a big problem for any continued support for Trump that you might have? Was it January 6th?

It was before that. I honestly also thought that after he lost, I was wrong about quite a few things, I thought that he might go away. I actually went and advised on the Georgia special election because I’m still a Republican. I still wanted them to have the Senate majority at the time.

And I thought that it was more we’re just lying to the public, and that made me really uncomfortable. I never thought that it would have been as bad as January 6th was. And I know so many people now on the right are like, it wasn’t a big deal, but I think it was a horrible day in American history.

To be honest, I recognize it’s emotional and personal for me because Mike Pence was there and he was somebody I was so close with. I know his family and the idea of him being in that position, doing the right thing, and having everyone around him turn on him and this president who he worked so loyally for. But that was the breaking point. I was, I was already not with him before then.

Do you know what Mike Pence feels about this behind the scenes? He’s obviously fairly taciturn publicly. Does he ever comment on the fact that Trump almost got him hanged?

I regrettably haven’t kept up with Pence as much as I would have liked to. I’m close with Mark Shaw, who’s still an advisor to him, and I think it speaks tremendous volumes that Mike Pence is not endorsing Donald Trump. I think that’s actually one of the under-told stories of this election.

Surprising, given how many people have caved.

Correct, exactly. Not because Mike Pence necessarily holds some massive constituency with voters. It speaks to just how unfit the man who was closest to him at every step of his presidency thinks that he is. And someone who, by the way, for decades was the standard bearer for conservatism, is saying it’s not even worth it. He’s tacitly acknowledging he’d rather a Democrat win and Democratic policies win that he may disagree with than have somebody who’s anti-Constitution win the presidency.

You spoke out pretty vocally after January 6th. One thing I find fascinating is when you go back and look, let’s say at Fox News coverage of that day, everyone is horrified. And in the months afterwards, somehow they got over that. And now there’s this whitewashing campaign about the events of that day. I feel like you have a very good sense of the way Trump voters think. And I think at the time, after January 6th, Trump was considered over. You had Lindsey Graham declaring [he was finished], you had —

McCarthy.

And then somehow Trump came back. And now, according to the polls, he’s very likely the next president of the United States. How do you think that happened?

I think it’s a number of factors. I think the right-wing media re-embraced him because I think he’s excellent for ratings. He’s ratings gold. I think that that was a business decision and calculation that was made because I can tell you I appeared on Fox News a number of times. I was on the day after January 6th to condemn it, to say he should not be president again. I actually said that he should be removed from office or resign. And for a while I would still appear. And I remember being on as he came back to speak at CPAC, and that was his first big reentry to the public stage.

And I was never asked back again. No hard feelings, it wouldn’t be the right place for me. But I think that there was a turning point where they’re like, oh, okay, he’s coming back. But I think a big factor was elected Republicans. I think they saw that a lot of their supporters and base were still with him, and they were quick to re-embrace him. I think of Kevin McCarthy panhandling at Mar-A-Lago. Rick Scott did the same.

I never blame Trump voters. Most of my family are Trump voters. When they believe things like the election was stolen or that January 6th was actually Antifa and the left-wing mob, that’s because that’s being reinforced to them by people in places of public trust, whether it’s the media or it’s their elected representatives.

And honestly, I don’t know the key way to combat that. I try to, on a more personal level, just being like, listen, these are people, a lot of them have now been arrested. They’ve gone on trial, and they’ve said they were there for Donald Trump. They’re admittedly there because of being Trump supporters.

But yeah, the great whitewashing of January 6th is wild. Don’t sleep on the Tucker Carlson factor of it. You had a might as well be an agent of the Kremlin on Fox News, the most watched man in cable news for several years. Rehabilitating Trump, damaging our efforts with Ukraine and completely lying about that day. I mean, that’s a really powerful platform.

Extraordinarily powerful and very dishonest.

Just wildly dishonest. Honestly, editorially, how they got away with it. I guess they didn’t, you’ve got the Dominion settlement, but he was one of the most dangerous men on television. And I wish him luck in whatever basement in Maine he’s in.

I don’t think he’s nearly as influential as he was on Fox.

He’s not. That does say something. A lot of these huge figures at Fox, once they leave, they don’t get the same, Bill O’Reilly —

I thought he would be different because he has a following in a way that others don’t. But Twitter views are not cable news ratings. Cable news ratings are far bigger than people assume. It means a lot when millions of people concurrently are watching your show. That’s a huge audience. I did want to ask you about another Fox News host that you worked with in the Trump administration, Kayleigh McEnany. Are you in touch with her at all?

No, we’ve not spoken since I left the White House. I wish her well. She’s a good mom. I think we just don’t see eye to eye on some fundamental and very important things.

She was vigorously promoting the stolen election stuff when she was at the White House. And to go from that to being hired at a news network is a little surprising. Have you followed her at Fox at all? What do you think of her?

Honestly, when she’s on Mediaite — listen, Kayleigh is a wildly talented person. She’s a very smart woman. She’s a Harvard Law grad. I think we all face this in media where we need to make calculations. Are we going to say the truth? And it may be unpopular and it may be hard for us and damaging, professionally? Or are we going to stick with the narrative and where the bloodstream of the right is going?

And by the way, on that, because I still to this day, folks are like, you sold out or you’re an opportunist and I spent a year of my life before The View ever called me quietly rebuilding. I was working in a consulting firm. It was one of the toughest years of my life, other than I got married that year to my husband. But genuinely doing the work of thinking who do I want to be? I see a party going a direction that it’s hard for me to think I could continue to exist in and be a person with integrity who is actually saying what I believe.

And there was a real moment where I was like, I don’t know that I’m ever going to be in politics or public life again because I just can’t buy onto this bandwagon. And then other things worked out over time. And I am where I am now. But life’s about decisions, and we all have them to make, and I’ve certainly made some bad ones.

That’s an interesting explanation, because, as you know, you have gotten some heat for your evolution going from working in the Trump administration and supporting it to being a big critic of it. Would you say that was an earnest evolution based on where the Trump administration went? Could you not have seen earlier on that Trump would end up like that, or would you say you were genuinely surprised that it went so wrong?

It’s a great question. Something I think about a lot. I think that we as a society are too quick to not want people to evolve and not want people to grow. There’s this great quote that Scott Galloway used, I want to say it’s Muhammad Ali, but it’s “if I was the same person at 50 that I was at 20, I wasted 30 years.” There’s an element of, I think I grew in my time in the Trump administration. I think the added experiences of being with Pence and at DOD, at the Pentagon, helped really over time, change how I viewed politics in general, our political discourse, our issues of polarization.

But then I did agree to work for him. And there was still this part of me that wanted to believe in him. And there were policies I had issues with from the jump. And by the way, kudos to Mike Pence. He never takes credit. But think of the scariest Trump policies. He was instrumental in reversing everyone. Muslim ban, family separation —

I wanted to ask you about the Muslim ban, actually, because you’re Syrian Lebanese. I actually also happen to be Syrian Lebanese. I know I don’t look it, the McLaughlin side of the family won the genetic battle —

The genes are strong.

But I come from a family of Syrian Christians, which I believe you do as well. And the Muslim ban was a big deal in 2016.

And by the way, it’s part of the Project 2025 platform for next cycle. And this is what drives me crazy. Team Biden — how that’s not front and center in Michigan? I get it, there are a lot of voters who are upset about Gaza. But remind them, this is the man who literally implemented a Muslim ban or worked to implement a Muslim ban, and is now talking about it in a second term. And who, I’ve said this before, he would literally wipe Gaza off the map if one right-wing cable news host got in his ear and said it was politically sound. I’m stunned by that.

But on the broader question of policy in the Trump era, there are things that, looking back, I made too much peace with or could have seen more about who he was. And then there were things I did believe in that he was doing right. And I think that’s not lost on me with there being so many people I love and care about and respect who still support him. And so I try to approach reaching them from a place of non-judgment.

I also think a lot of people don’t, I’m speaking more for viewers, not for myself, but they don’t tune into every crazy thing he says. They’re not aware of every scandal and salacious thing. It’s like the macro, is my life better today or not, that they’re voting on.

Mike Pence declined to endorse Trump. But then you have people like Nikki Haley and Bill Barr who are either endorsing him or saying that they would probably vote for him, despite being very critical — and there is a difference between saying you disagree with some of policies, and saying this person is fundamentally unfit for office, but I might vote for them. How do you explain that there are people who are very smart, like Nikki Haley and Bill Barr, who watched the first Trump term from the inside, and have described it as very dangerous, but are still saying, well, we might vote for him in 2024.

It’s power. I think power is just one of the most enticing things that we have in society. Kaitlan Collins, to her credit, interviewed Bill Barr and asked about an anecdote that I had shared about a meeting he and I were both in the Oval Office, where Trump straight up said a staffer who leaked a story should be executed. And Bill Barr kind of danced it and said I don’t recall that specific instance, but there were others where we talked about executing people. How do you rationalize that is a person fit in sound judgment to be president of the United States?

They’re reading the tea leaves. They know there’s a very real chance he’s going to be president again. And there’s not a lot of glory or victory in being right, but being on the wrong side of Trump, I think that’s ultimately what it comes down to.

I really wanted to root for Nikki Haley. I think it was pathetic that she turned around and endorsed him. I think she knows better. I wish that there were more people out there, but I do think it’s notable, I mentioned Pence, but every living former standard bearer for the GOP, so everyone who’s been on a GOP presidential ticket, with the exception of Sarah Palin, is not backing Donald Trump — Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Dan Quayle, presumably George Bush, Mike Pence, everyone that we entrusted who had risen to the level of seriousness that they could see themselves in the Oval, says oh no, this guy should not be in the Oval.

Has it been frustrating that the Republican Party seems to be incapable from moving on from Trump?

It’s deeply frustrating. And finally, one more thing I did want to say on criticisms that people like me face, I think many of them are valid, but the Republican Party has also fundamentally changed. So I feel like I’ve moderated on some things, but the core things I believe in are still there.

And then I’m sitting here losing my damn mind because apparently we suddenly don’t support aid for Ukraine and we’re okay with Russia taking more land and we’re not going to support NATO if they don’t pay their fair share, like fundamentals. Donald Trump’s betrayal on TikTok, purely based on money that he’s going to get for his campaign, is one of the most blatantly corrupt things I’ve ever seen. And we’re all just like, yeah, no, he’s totally tough on China. This will have repercussions for decades to come.

Having served in the administration the first time around, do you have a sense of who would stock the White House and the broader administration under a second Trump term? Would it be different from the first time around?

It’d be fundamentally different. So you wouldn’t have some of the folks with experience who served as checks and balances in the first. I think of people like Mark Esper, John Bolton, John Kelly, Bill Barr, to his credit, in his time in the administration. The first thing that they’re going to be looking at is loyalty. Donald Trump considers it one of his great failings that so many disloyal people were able to get into the first administration.

Honestly, people are surprised that I was, considering I hadn’t voted for him, but it was ragtag, put together at the last minute. They didn’t think they were going to win in 2016. Now the first order of business is loyalty, and then it’s going to be the kind of belief system they have, which is going to be the MAGA, ultra populist, nationalist, Christian nationalist.

He’s going to surround himself with — I actually don’t buy this like no one good is going to sign up to serve, because I think most people, when given the opportunity for power, are going to say yes. The harder part is people who are credentialed that can actually make it into the vetting process. I worry the most about the national security apparatus. So the intelligence community, the Department of Defense.

Which is large, and they’re talking about purging it entirely.

It would be insane. It would fundamentally undercut our national security in a way that we’ve never faced before. And the idea of putting in people who, conspiracy theories are one of the greatest dangers on the right. Right now, there are just so many people who believe so many things that are untrue, and that you would put those people in positions of power and authority where they have access to classified information, where they could be exposed to opportunities to be corrupted and to work with foreign adversaries. I think it’s a scary moment in American history.

I’m looking forward to HUD Secretary Steve Bannon. Rachel Maddow did an interview with CNN recently, and she suggested that she fears being sent to a detention camp if Trump is re-elected. She was speaking about his pledge to do mass deportations of migrants. And she suggested, well, we don’t know that it’s just going to be migrants in these camps. It could be members of the media, enemies of Trump, people like me. My instinct is to dismiss that kind of rhetoric as a little bit of hysteria. But then again, I remember in 2020, I was dismissive of Bill Maher when he said that Trump would never leave office. Do you think there’s any weight to those ideas, or is it all a little bit over the top?

I think you need to take him literally, but I think you need to — I hate to even spend my time trying to be in the mind of Donald Trump, but read the tea leaves a bit about the priorities of things. Rage and retribution are going to be the governing principle, but I think it’s going to start with the biggest deportation program you’ve ever seen. And I think that includes DACA recipients, a lot of people who’ve lived their entire life in this country, who don’t know their country of birth that they came from. And I think there will be real chilling effects on media. I would see it more as tying people up in lawsuits, and trying to sic the FCC on people making it as difficult as possible to do real journalism, to say anything critical of him.

But nothing is out of the realm of possibility. Like, keep in mind this a person who esteems Viktor Orban, somebody who likes the way that Xi Jinping runs China. That is a playbook. I always want to caution myself, I never want to fall into the Trump Derangement Syndrome camp. But I think don’t rule anything out. But it will, at minimum, look fundamentally different in this country.

And by the way, something I want to mention, one of the things that attracted me to Donald Trump, again, didn’t vote for him, but I liked, was thank God we’re not going to have to sit here and argue about things like marriage equality. He didn’t care about them. I thought that was a good thing for the GOP. Post-Dobbs, and you can read it in Clarence Thomas’ decision, is he’s starting to talk about things like Obergefell coming down. He references the Loving decision. There are also things that are outside of what Donald Trump himself would do, but that could happen under his Supreme Court. And with cases being brought up from activists, courts in the state, there are those things that it’s less his direct hand in, but just about the direction that the country’s going.

We’re getting the first of two debates between Trump and Biden on your networks, ABC News and CNN.

I love that both my networks got them.

What are your predictions for these debates? Do you think it’s going to remind voters who Trump is in the same way they did in 2020? Or do you think, on the flip side, you worry that Biden is just so old.

So I think they’re the highest stakes. People like to say debates don’t matter. But with the two oldest candidates in history, the history of Trump, I think there’ll be tremendous interest in these.

I don’t think that I think you’re going to see a lot of people tune in to watch them. But what’s also going to matter is what lives on TikTok afterward. What are the viral moments, the clippy sound, biting moments? And Trump has frankly been a lot better at that space.

My advice, I’ll put the same advice to the Biden camp to not assume that he’s going to set himself on fire and come out of the gates being crazy. He very well may, he’s done that before, but he’s also at times proven himself capable of getting through something in a structured way. I think muting the mics is a good thing for discourse, but I also think there’s a world in which that helps reel in the crazy of Trump. I worry about the Biden energy. Biden’s got it all up here, I believe. I think he can talk about the policy, but he just reads so much older than Trump side by side. And that’s a very real concern for voters, to be honest. I don’t know who I think is going to win it.

The best thing Biden could do is try to get the crazy out of him, try to get him to react. Remind him he’s a convict. Like to say things that can show that side, that he’s trying to remind the American people who he is. Because otherwise, I think Biden has a lot to lose, right?

I want to ask you a personal question about your father. You have not spoken to him since January 6th, if I’m not mistaken. Have you guys started speaking yet? Are you still estranged?

We’ve not. We’ve not spoken. I feel fundamentally that politics should not get in the way of friendships or family.

He’s been a big figure in right-wing media for years.

I’m always open to reconciliation. I think that door’s not been opened yet. I’m open to it, but I think it speaks to a broader, sadder moment in our politics that I’m not the only person that’s in this boat. There’s many people I care about who have also had estrangements over politics. It shouldn’t be that way, right? It just frankly shouldn’t.

And my thing that I remind people close to me, family members, especially as I knew Donald Trump personally, I even really liked Donald Trump personally at one point. I got to witness firsthand things that most of the American public never will of just how unfit he is, how casually cruel he is to people, how he makes rash decisions and can be so easily influenced by the loudest voices around him.

It’s hard for me to understand why people would believe a politician over somebody who they know personally. But that’s that’s the world we live in, right?

I’m curious what it’s like living in New York for you now. During the Trump administration, staffers in DC would often run into problems just because they worked in that White House. Do you ever run into problems in New York, or are you welcomed with open arms?

It’s a sad moment, in like I get more threats from the right. I get more hate from the right than the left. Listen, there’s always going to be people who say, “She’s complacent. She shouldn’t speak now. Why should we believe her?” Fine. At me all day.

I’ve never gotten a a death threat from the left wing. I’ve gotten quite a bit from the right, and I think that’s sad. I think that also reflects other people who have spoken out against Trump. And it’s why any time he invokes violent rhetoric, I call it out immediately. Like today he had a fundraising email that referred to, like, the guillotine, that they’re coming after him with.

“Haul Out the Guillotine” was the name of the fundraiser.

Is it the French Revolution? Like, what are we doing? And how does that not alarm more people? I think that’s weird.

I think it’s because it’s been so regular that people are desensitized to it. You can only read so many headlines about this stuff.

Yeah. That’s my genuine experience. I’ve luckily not had a lot of in-person confrontations. I’m not thrilled for the lead up to the election.

What I was going to say, because he’s called you out a couple of times on Truth Social. Are you a little nervous that perhaps if the election heats up, if he wins the election, that from your perch on The View and CNN that you could come under more threats?

I’m definitely aware of it. And I’m nervous for it, I think honestly for my mental health. I focus on the macro, like the impacts for the country, rather than sitting here and being like how bad will this be for Alyssa? It’s going to be bad for a lot of people. And there will be other media targets. There will be other people who have spoken out against him who are targeted. There will also be a lot of Democrats and I think the Biden officials should take that very seriously. He’s openly saying what he’s going to do, that he’s going to prosecute people or Democrats who he feels came after him. And it’s funny, he’s utilizing this language of lawfare, yet he’s the one openly talking about weaponizing our justice system in his future term.

I’ve heard a lot of people say, well, he threatened to prosecute Hillary Clinton, but he decided not to when he got into office. That is a revisionist history. He really tried. He really gave it his best shot.

He would have loved to.

Whether Biden or Trump wins in 2024, do you plan on sticking in the media business, staying on The View, staying on CNN?

I think so. Honestly, so much of my career has been a bit unpredictable, just based on where our politics have gone. I plan to keep having a public voice. I think if he wins, my voice is incredibly important.

And if he loses, I think that there’s a real discussion about the future of the party. I think it’s going to be a moment Republicans should have come to in 2020 where they’re like this guy has been consistently losing. You cannot win elections catering to 30% of the country.

And I want to be front and center in that conversation. I think I like the company I’m in. We may be a really small ragtag group of Paul Ryan, Liz Cheney, Cassidy Hutchinson, Sarah Matthews. But I’d way rather be with people who are trying to be on the right side of history than aligning myself with the direction that the party’s going.

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