Leavitt hosted her first briefing on Tuesday
Whoopi Goldberg claims 'wokeness' gave Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt her job
"The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg claimed on Wednesday that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt may not have her job if not for "wokeness."
"The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg lashed out at White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday over her remarks about wokeness during her first press briefing and suggested that wokeness got her the job as press secretary.
"I would like her to do homework. She said something yesterday that pissed me off, that was, ‘there will be no wokeness here.’ Let me explain, without that wokeness, you might not have that job," Goldberg said.
Leavitt hosted her first press briefing on Monday, and was asked about the pause on some federal grants related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and more, and said the pause meant "no more funding for transgenderism and wokeness across our federal bureaucracy and agencies, as well as no "more funding for Green New Deal social engineering policies."
"Because women were not invited to that table. Women were not invited to many tables in this nation. The reason we fought and busted our behinds to make sure that you didn’t have to worry about this, and now to hear you talk about it and to hear anybody talk about the wokeness, the wokeness was put in place for a reason, because Black people couldn’t get into colleges, because women could not get into the colleges they wanted to go to. This is all women. See, this is not Black, Asian women. This is all women. Women were not invited to this party. It was a man’s world, and we busted our a--es to make sure that this was a person's world," Goldberg added.
Whoopi Goldberg lashed out at WH press secretary Karonline Leavitt on Wednesday and said that "wokeness" got her the job. (Screenshot/ABC/TheView)
Goldberg called on Leavitt to stop using the "wokeness" phrase and added, "you don’t understand what you’re saying."
"You’re saying about yourself that, you know, hey, that’s a terrible thing to be. It’s not a terrible thing to be. That’s why we fought, that’s what we were fighting for so that you could stand in that podium, so that Karine Jean-Pierre could stand at that podium so women of all colors and ilks, wherever they came from, whatever their belief system was, they had the opportunity to bust down that door," she added.
Leavitt did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The press secretary announced during the briefing that the Trump administration was rolling out major changes to make room for newer, less traditional media voices in the briefing room.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt holds her first news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on January 28, 2025, in Washington, DC. At 27 years old, Leavitt is the youngest White House press secretary in U.S. history. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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"In keeping with this revolutionary media approach that President Trump deployed during the campaign, the Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media who are seated in this room," she began before citing Gallup polls showing Americans' low confidence in the mainstream media.
The co-hosts of "The View" mostly took issue with the new approach.
Co-host Sunny Hostin said new media were not qualified to be in the room, and Goldberg suggested she didn't want anyone to be able to just "spout stuff" at the briefings.
"Quite honestly I like when we’re held to standards. I don’t always like the way they do it but we have to have ourselves together. We can’t just say stuff in spite of what they tell you. We can’t just spout stuff. So I want that for everybody," she said.
Fox News' Kristine Parks and Kyle Drennen contributed to this report.
Hanna Panreck is an associate editor at Fox News.
